Exchangeable Image File Format. That's what all the official EXIF sites say it stands for. (I think it should be EIFF - but I guess they don't care what I think.)
This is number 13 post in the series about 10 Cool Features of Your Digital Camera You Should Learn and Use. We're on feature # 9 about EXIF data.
When I was a young photographer with my film cameras I was often taught that I should carry a notebook around and record information about the date, time, exposure, camera, lens, flash, etc. and I even knew photographers who did that. Myself? I didn't have the patience for it, not to mention that I probably couldn't ever find where I put the notes once I had them anyway. You'd have to be one of those organized people to do that. That let me out. Then, along comes digital. Some smart person figured out that if the camera could assign and record a file name, even if it is something like P01003202.jpg, it could also record a lot of other information and attach it to the photo. Now, thanks to these guys/gals you can go back even years later and see what date you took the photo, even the exact time (Assuming you set your camera's date and time correctly), what lens you were using, the shutter speed and aperture, even whether or not your flash fired. Oh. . . that's just the beginning. There is more information available than 99.9% of us will ever use - but it's there for us if we need it. I find myself using some if it quite often. Just yesterday when I was putting together the "How I Did It" article I went to the original photo I was writing about to see what my exposure was. Without that EXIF data I could have done no more than guess, and I would have guessed way wrong by the way.
I'm not here to tell you how or when you'll use this info, except to say the more you know about the data on your best or worst photos the more you'll be able to learn from it, and sometimes it's just really nice to know when you took that photo, or which lens you were using. But, maybe you've never seen your EXIF data and you'd like to. How do you access it?
Just like any other recorded data, you have to have software that knows how to read and interpret the information that you have. Some of you may have and use Photoshop. Photoshop itself does have a way of accessing it under File>File Info, then make sure you're on the Raw Data tab. However, the info is not presented in a really easy to read format, so I suggest you find better ways. One better way, is that if you have Photoshop you may also have Bridge. Bridge has an excellent EXIF data tool built in that you can customize. Here is an example of some of the data from the original of the photo above.
If you don't have Bridge there are numerous FREE tools on the internet that will work just as well such as EXIF Reader. If you'll notice there is a slider bar on the right side in the screen grab below, indicating that there was even more data available by sliding that up or down to access it. It is fairly simple and basic but it does the job. Even though EXIF was originally designed for JPEG images EXIF Reader claims to read many RAW files including the ones for the Olympus DSLRs but it wouldn't read mine. You may also notice that there is Copyright information shown in the EXIF data. Obviously your camera doesn't know who you are and automatically copyright it for you so that was done with Adobe Bridge, but I'm sure there is lots of other software available to do that also.
You should also check the software that may have come with your camera. Does it have a photo viewer and/or organizer? It may include access to the EXIF data in there. Anyway, It doesn't take long to Google "Software for EXIF data" and come up with quite a few options, both free and for a price. The important thing for you to know is there is a lot of information there for you when you want or need it and it's not hard to get once you know that, so you can put your notebook and pencil away except maybe to record those things that even EXIF can't figure out yet, like who's that third guy from the left?
I'd love to hear from you if you have found a great program for this or if this has helped you at all. Grab your camera and go out and make some EXIF data happen.
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment