EXIF DATA

[GuyHammond]

Am I missing something or is it not possible to retrieve data on which program mode a photo was taken in, e.g. Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority etc.? There is an “Exposure Program” field in the Info panel but on most of my images it just says “Normal”. On some images it says “Landscape” which is even more confusing because there is already an “Orientation” field which says “Normal” whereas I would expect that to say “Landscape”.

If I go into the “Metadata Flip” panel and enter “Program” into the search field on the right hand side an entry comes up for “Exposure Program” which returns the result “Program AE” for example. That’s exactly what I’m looking for so I select the heart next to it assuming I have made that particular entry a favourite. However, when I return to the standard Info panel “Exposure Program” is there but just says “Normal” as before. Are there two entries for “Exposure Program” or is it just picking up the wrong data? Also, what does selecting the heart do? I don’t appear to get any additional fields in the Info panel regardless of which other Exif items I “heart”.

[Simeon Coope]

I see similar (except for orientation) in the default Exposure Program EXIF data. Where I see “Normal” in the basic EXIF I see “Program AE” in the EXIF flip panel. I do see “Shutter” and “Aperture” (and presumably “Manual”) in the default EXIF, whereas the info is more expanded in the flip eg “Aperture-priority AE”.

[Nik Bhatt]

You can view the program mode – it’s called Exposure Program. That field in EXIF is documented as having the following values (this information is from ExifTool)

0 = Not defined
1 = Manual
2 = Normal program
3 = Aperture priority
4 = Shutter priority
5 = Creative program (biased toward depth of field)
6 = Action program (biased toward fast shutter speed)
7 = Portrait mode (for closeup photos with the background out of focus)
8 = Landscape mode (for landscape photos with the background in focus)

I have tested some images shot with Shutter and Aperture priority and the value is reported correctly. You will see “Normal” or “Landscape” sometimes because that’s the official term, not to be confused with Orientation, which might also be Landscape (or Portrait).

There is also something called Exposure Mode, which the app does not currently report, but will in the next update. That has these values: (unfortunately, today the main site for looking at EXIF specifications is down).
Default = none
0 = Auto exposure
1 = Manual exposure
2 = Auto bracket
Other = reserved

What you see in ExifTool may be different – they are mapping them to different strings – where they get them, I don’t know. For example, I see Program AE in ExifTool, but the value is actually “Normal”

The heart indicates an “exif favorite”. You can use that to reduce the number of items that you see when you hit the EXIF button. That is a different metadata set from the one that appears when you hit Info. That is because a) ExifTool does not run on iOS and b) it is very slow to retrieve data from ExifTool, so I do split the two up.

[GuyHammond]

Thanks for the very detailed explanation, it’s very helpful.

I think I understand it better now: if I use aperture or shutter priority then it seems to report that correctly under Exposure Program. However, if I use program mode P it just reports “Normal” in the info panel but “Program AE” in the flip panel. Panasonic’s full auto mode – iA – seems to report a number of things, often “Landscape” because that presumably is the type of scene the camera is intelligently assessing as the content.

Orientation on the other hand doesn’t seem to use “Landscape” at all but usually “Normal” with portrait images being reported as “90deg Counter-clockwise” or similar.

There is also something called “Shooting Mode” but I’m not sure how that fits in. It reports various things such as “Program” or “Scenery”.

I’m still not 100% clear what the heart does. When I select the EXIF button I still have to scroll through a huge list to see any items I’ve checked with a heart. It doesn’t appear to reduce the list as you describe.

Incidentally what is the meaning of “increased precision for some Exif Keys” in Settings?

[Nik Bhatt]

First, ExifTool has different terminology – I don’t know where it comes from. I’m using the same terminology that you will see in Apple’s Preview.

Second, the heart marks a field as a favorite. Then at the top of the list there is another heart button. Click that and you will see the list filtered to just show favorites.

Increased Precision means to show more numbers after the decimal point (the default is just two).

[GuyHammond]

I had missed the additional heart at the top but I see it now that you’ve pointed it out.

Thanks for clearing up the other points too.

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