Why don't the photos displayed in the gallery have the exif visible data, essential for a complete reading of the shot?

But no one gives an explanation in this forum? 

Sergio,

Like you, I wish EXIF were included.  We can learn a lot from knowing aperture, shutter speed, focal length, and ISO.  I don't know why 1X management chooses to remove EXIF data.  It may be that their photographic philosophy prefers that images speak for themselves with no technical details to distract. 

I hope you'll get some replies here.  I'd love to know what other members think.  Maybe there are good arguments for having no EXIF.

. . . . . Steven T.

There are no good reasons not to have the exif data, this is a serious gap of 1x! 

Hi Steven.

Ohhh - you need to educate me then (I am serious, I am not trying to make fun of you), because I am not sure I understand the need for EXIF data. As I see it, it takes a good deal of effort understanding what EXIF tells me in relation to a specific image, and if I cant see the lightsource (or infer it's nature from another part of the image) I find EXIF rather useless. But I would love to know if I am wrong in this and why.

Take for example a studio portrait. What good would it do anyone to know the aperture, the shutter speed or ISO? You can "learn" how a closeup portrait will look if shot with a 35mm lens rather than a 135mm lens, but only if you know what the person, that is being photographed, looks like and your visual refence is based on your own observation. He may not have been photgraphed with a 35mm closeup. Perhaps the person simply has a round face and a really significant nose... 

I would agree that there are certain things we CAN use EXIF data for... for example to help evaluate if an image is out of fokus or is blurred due to camera movement, but in some cases this could just as easily be quesswork on our behalf.

I may be wrong, and if so - I would LOVE to be educated, but I have never found EXIF data of use in general.

With best regards

Henrik

Hi, Henrik,

There are many 1X members who are just starting out in photography.   They might benefit from knowing what exposure was used for a photograph of the Aurua Borealis or Milky Way, the shutter speed for a photo of a speeding vehicle that was done with panning technique, or a photo blurred with Intentional Camera Movement.  How fast a shutter do you need to catch birds in flight?   What aperture or lens was used to make a beautiful blurred background for a macro flower shot; what aperture for a full depth of field for a still life photo?  Was a neutral density filter used for this waterfall or seascape?

Of course we can learn techniques from books and tutorials, but I think seeing large numbers of photos and noting the technical details can build, day by day,  a reference library in the brain so when we're confronted with an unusual photo opportunity we have a better chance of making a good guess for  setting the camera. 

As well as EXIF, I think descriptions of editing techniques would help us learn together.  Is this photo a montage?  Was focus stacking used to achieve the perect depth of field?     And so on. 

Perhaps there are good reasons to remove the EXIF data,  but I don't see the harm in having it available.  Photographers who already know everything there is to know can just ignore it.  I think it would help beginners.  Although it was half a century ago,  I can still remember struggling with the concept of f/4 being bigger than f/5.6 even though it was a smaller number - but then something called 'depth of field' was larger at f/5.6 than at f/4.  It can be confusing for those just starting out on the learning curve.  

. . .   Steven

PS:  I've lately been enjoying your thoughtful and well-written forum posts.

For those who are interested in technical details and some other things about the creation of an image we offer a lot of tutorials (nearly 700). 

https://1x.com/tutorials

Try it out and have fun !

Good light, Hans-Martin

I don't understand the whole discussion.

When I export JPGs, from either Photoshop or Lightroom, I don't maintain the EXIF data, just the copyright. As Henrik noted, what does it help to see camera settings, it's the light that makes the photograph. If I use a 1/13th second shutter speed, that can be a glitch - or I had a cherry pit pillow with me, how would you know? If I used a variable ND filter to tone down background vs. a primary subject in flash light, it won't be mentioned in Exif. 

In short: If somebody wants to learn how a photograph is done, ask the photographer. 1x is, besides an online gallery, also a community. Plus we have the critique forum where we can discuss photo techniques.

My 2 cent,

Mike

Hi Steve.

That is offcourse correct, I did not think about that. From an educational standpoint this can sometimes convey information that can be useful. My fear would be that someone also might get discrouraged thinking that If I set my camer to the same setting as x, y and z, I am going to create great images like the image that was shot with settings at x, y and z, and that is definitely not nescessarily the case. It may end up being a dissapointment.

But certainly - photographing specific scenes, it may be helpful knowing what other photographers do, and maybe use that as a starting point. I did not think about that.

One reason I personally think EXIF information on an image can "hurt" photography is that it has a risk of reducing photography to a technical excersise. I would MUCH rather have a description of the thoughts that went into making a photograph and the emotions that it is thought to convey. I am fully aware that this type of information would need to be added manually as no camera can record your thoughts or emotions automatically as it does the technical information in EXIF. But I somehow whish that we would become better photographers from knowing things like that, rather than the technical information, that is - in some ways - rather meaningless in this context.

I do the same as Mike:

And I absolutely agree with him, that although certain technical information can be gleaned from EXIF data, there is SO much information missing that it rarely is helpful for someone to recreate an image.

A while back (many years actually) on flickr, I started to share lighting ratios for my portraits. People asked for EXIF data (which I didn't provide, and never have, except by accident), and I thought... EXIF will tell my camera settings, but say nothing on how I was actually lighting a portrait. It would tell someone that the key light was at a power that resultet in me setting a shutter speed of 1/160 s annd an aperture of f/9 at ISO64, but not WHY I wanted this, nor what my fill-light, kicker-light, or separation-light was set at.

So i started sharing my lighting ratios, and after a while I realized that was just as meaningless for a beginner, because my settings were dictated by MUCH more than just light or getting the desired exposure.

Allow me to dive into some of the technical thought-process that goes into me creating a specific portrait:

I was shooting a portrait of an mature lady (CEO of a large company) and she was very concerned with her wrinkles and how she would appear on a photograph that was supposed to adorn a magazine cover. Now I personally do not think age, wrinkles or scars should EVER be an issue and often find them quite attractive as they offer a TRUE glimpse of the personality and are a sign of maturity and poise. But I am also aware that for a portait it IS important that the people I photograph feel at ease and that they can entrust me with the task of making a photograph, that doesn't simply looks like them (or they way they themselves think they should look), but rather an photograph that tells a story of who they are.

As a consequence I chose to light her portrait rather wide, and build dimensionality to the portrait using flags and scrims rather than harsh light that would exacerbate her age. I also chose to shoot a very specific lens (Nikkor 135mm F/2 DC) that is one of the greatest portrait lenses of all times... not becuase it has creat contrast (seem sharp)... because it does, but becauase the lens design gives a slight defocusing of the red part of the spectrum (singular chromatic abberation) that means the specular highlights of the skin, is slightly defocused (at the lens' normal settings), giving the skin a very specific kind of "glow" that is not possible to create in post (and I am not very good at Photoshop either).

The effect of this chromatic abberation in the red part of the sepctrum is best seen wide open, i chose to shoot the portrait at f/2, and I had to use scrims to cut down the light from my lights to give me the exposure I wanted.

When the client came I also spend considerable time getting to know her, before I even put my eye to the viewfinder and pressed the shutte. I spend time explaing to her, why most people don't like to see photographs of themselves, and the thoughts I had put into getting ready to make her portrait.

As a sidenote: 15 minutes was allocated to shoot her portrait - but she became SO comfortable with me photographing her, that we ended up taking a hour-long walk where I photographed her outside, walking i natural light, and she was SO pleased with each and every one of the 4-5 portraits I ended up picking for her, that I have been hired back many times, to update her corporate portrait, and have been hired for other assignments as well.

My point with this somewhat lengthy description of the process and thought involved is this: NONE of all these - that I find - VERY important details in creating that specific portrait, would be known from simply reading the EXIF data, and even though some of this is very specific technically, it still wouldn't make sense just copying the settings and lighting ratios, trying to learn how I made that specific portait.

But I have to concede... there ARE situations where knowing exposure settings COULD become helful, just a whole lot more situations where it makes little sense or could even be misleading.

With best regards

Henrik

Good news, EXIF-info is going to be displayed for all images, it's in our developing pipeline.

There is still a bug in the EXIFs. Somebody mentioned it some months ago but there was no change until now.

The EXIFs are overtaken automatically and shown to the photographer after uploading an image.

Interestingly the shutter speed is shown in the field "exposure" and in the field "shutter speed" you find a somewhat stupid value. When I remember right, it's always the same (6,92 s). 

It would be nice to fix this before making the EXIFs public.

Good light, Hans-Martin

I hope this helps.

Hello, sometimes I eliminate the EXIF ​​data, I don't like the photo to be judged by the EXIF ​​data, I prefer that it be valued for what it transmits, for its possible quality, or art, if it has it. Lately I don't delete them, because someone asked me to leave them, it can help others.

It can also mislead, since I take pictures from cars, buses, and planes, if you don't know, it can confuse you, I have two awared photos and one is taken from a plane taking off and the other from a car at more than 100 km/h .

Lately I use the EOS R Camera, and I always use the AV mode, since I control everything, the exposure, aperture, ISO, depth of field, diffraction (more or less). It turns out that in this camera and in AV mode only, Canon has improved the software (so they say), and the ISO is changed when the camera detects that the photo is not going to come out well, and it forces me to constantly correct those changes, for example:

On a bright sunny, blue sky day, around 12 pm, in Madrid (Spain), I set the camera to ISO 100, AV mode, f/8 and use a 24 - 105 Canon L-series lens.

I start taking photos and the EOS R starts to correct the ASA, since I don't look at the screen to see if the photo has turned out well (battery saving), I don't notice the ASA change. When I see them on the computer I find a total disaster, more noise and more saturation in whites, the values ​​were growing from 100 ASA to 125, 160, 320, 640, 800, 1000 ASA, as the firing speed is calculated by the machine there are photos that were taken at 1/3200 s, it is clear that this does not help anyone to understand how the photo should have been taken, luckily I was able to save photos later thanks to the RAW format.

What I want to say is that the most important thing is to understand what Paul Russell says in one of his books, "If you really understand aperture, shutter speed, ISO value and exposure compensation you can NOT go wrong".

As one does not know everything, I use the PhotoPills mobile software, and Pluto Trigger, which is very suitable, for example, for photos of lightning.

All the best.

News?

Thanks.