EXIF is one of the most frequently used digital photography acronyms. EXIF stands for Exchangeable Image File Format.
EXIF information, embedded in each photo file, is made up of metadata including date, camera settings, a small preview image, descriptions, copyright information and GPS coordinates. Not every camera populates this metadata (ex. descriptions, copyright information and GPS coordinates) due to hardware limitations. None-the-less most every digital camera will record date, camera settings and include a small preview image.
How do you access this information?
Most camera will display this information back to you when you review or preview your photos in camera. In addition editing and cataloging software will display this information.
Why should I reference EXIF data?
EXIF data provides a helpful mechanism of reference to photographers so that they can quickly identify what they did correctly or incorrectly out in the field. Not so long ago if a studious photographer wanted to reference what their settings were for each shot they had to document it in a field notebook and compare it to the film they received back.
More information can be found about EXIF on Wikipedia.
[tags]EXIF, metadata, digital photography, dSLR, camera, photo, terminology[/tags]
For people who feel comfortable with command line utilities, exiftool is great for displaying and writing EXIF data. Writing EXIF data comes in handy when you crop an image and want to copy the EXIF data from the original image to the cropped image.
For more information, please see my blog post about exiftool.