EXIF Data: Meticulous Notes For Sloppy Photographers
I noticed this extra feature on Flickr the other day and I was completely surprised and delighted!
Flickr displays the what kind of camera photos are taken with. This picture had been taken with my old camera, but I uploaded it to Flickr with my Treo. It is really cool from a historical standpoint. Wouldn’t it have been nice to be able to track every photo Ansel Adams took to each camera he owned. He kept such good notes that it’s almost possible, but not all of us are that meticulous.
When you click on more properties, you get all the photo information that your camera stored such as exposure, aperture, focal length, ISO speed and more. Things that Ansel Adams meticulously wrote down and kept track of are now automatically stored for you in the photo data by your camera. Flickr lets you easily access that information for whatever photos you upload to them.
How do they do that:
Almost all new digital cameras save JPEG (jpg) files with EXIF (Exchangeable Image File) data. Camera settings and scene information are recorded by the camera into the image file. Examples of stored information are shutter speed, date and time, focal length, exposure compensation, metering pattern and if a flash was used.
Source: Digicamhelp.
This is an awesome feature that I knew NOTHING about until now. I would have never found it out if I hadn’t noticed that little note to the side of my photos on Flickr.
After I read a book of Ansel Adams’ notes he wrote for EACH and EVERY photograph he took, I felt a little guilty for snapping thousands of photographs without so much of a thought of taking notes. Now, I don’t need to feel guilty. My camera takes meticulous notes for me.