Hiding EXIF info - so irritated!

Armanius

Bring Jack back!
Location
Houston, Texas
Name
Jack
I get so irritated when I'm on Flickr (or other photo websites), and photographers hide the EXIF info.

Being the gear head, all I want to know is what camera and/or lens was used. Plus, sometimes I also want to know the focal length, f-stop, and ISO.

Are photography trade secrets or professional careers going to get ruined simply because the most basic EXIF info is out in the open??

I also don't like it when people load up photos that are 512 pixels in size. Good grief, if you want people to look at your photos, don't make them have to squint! At least give me a 1024 pixels photo!

End rant.
 
+1. That is why I kept w/ pbase though they are not what they used to be eg they don't update their gear database that often and the storage limits are not very good compared to competition...
 
I think some software automatically strips (or fails to transfer) EXIF.

Some people believe their photos are special, hence stripping EXIF, small pics, large watermarks.
 
Why would one hide EXIF data?

Some people think it doesn't add to the purpose of sharing an image. Some people are paranoid that you might be able to find them with EXIF data. Or they simply want to irritate gear heads.

In truth, EXIF data can protect you from copyright infringement -- when lifted by people who don't know how to strip it when reposting it. That embedded copyright is an awesome tool to tracking down your images and enforcing copyright.

There are three likely scenarios at work for hidden EXIF.

1) The user is are expotrting from programs that don't keep the EXIF data intact. Older versions of photoshop, for example, if you were to "save as... jpg" and didn't select the retain exif data -- it would be erased. Other mobile software often strips exif data.

2) The user doesn't know what EXIF data is, and is blissfully unaware that it is hidden.

3) The user is choosing to hide EXIF data
 
I never do it. I'll tell you everything I do -- and you still won't get "my" pictures because you didn't take them, lol.

Although technique does involve an approach of some kind to exposure, it's really very, very little of what makes a photo good to great. I see absolutely NO reason to hide it.
 
I hide my EXIF data on Flickr mainly because when I take photos with my Leica M8.2 it doesn't record f/stops because of the manual non-Leica lenses. For some reason the camera records its own f/stop settings which are sometimes very different to what it actually is.
 
I show my exif on Flickr but I've gone through periods when I've hid it as well. Not being snooty (intentionally anyway), but there have been times when I got so sick of the level of gear obsession I just wanted people to look at the photography rather than checking the gear I was shooting with. Led to some funny stuff - like the Canon S90 Landscape that a couple of folks complimented as a shot I obviously took with the Fuji X-Pro and a testament to the fine IQ of the Fuji. Except that the date still showed and the photograph was obviously taken nearly two years before the X-Pro had been released.

These days I tend to leave it in, but I'll probably take it out again for a spell at some point...

-Ray
 
I don't hide mine but then I use a lot of old glass/manual focus so the only exif data on Flickr is/are the camera settings and not the lens- which I usually write on the description anyway. It can be annoying when peeps hide theirs as I get a lot of ideas/inspiration from other people's images, but I respect the right to hide it for whatever the reasons.
 
I don't hide mine but then I use a lot of old glass/manual focus so the only exif data on Flickr is/are the camera settings and not the lens- which I usually write on the description anyway. It can be annoying when peeps hide theirs as I get a lot of ideas/inspiration from other people's images, but I respect the right to hide it for whatever the reasons.

Whenever I post images here with an unusual lens, I try to remember to note that in my post, as well as the f-stop, in the event someone is curious.
 
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