Exif Information

First off thank you for still sticking around while I have been slacking off posting for the last few days. Between the job, the inlaws and my other baby (the real one not this blog), life has been pretty hectic.

A comment I made on a friend's picture on Facebook today made me think this might be a good topic to post about. Have you ever looked at a picture and wondered if there was a way you could dissect it to know exactly how it was taken? What the focal length was, what exposure it was shot at, what the iso was, whether the flash fired or not ? Maybe you've just wondered whether it was shot in a special "mode" or just automatic ?

If so then you have reason to rejoice because, there actually is a way to tell most of that information !  How you ask? Its called EXIF Data.  It stands for Exchangeable Image File Format. Before this file format came into being, there was no set standard agreed upon in the industry with regards to the data an image file must contain. The EXIF standard changed that. I won't go into the technical details here about EXIF since you can google it up. If you use Gimp you will need to install the EXIF Viewer plugin. PSE and big bro PS both have the functionality built in for you. One photosharing site that allows you to view the Exif data is Flickr. All you have to do once you navigate to the photo you want the exif on, is select "Actions" and from the drop down, select "View Exif info". What you get is a chart like so