I did read your other post, and to be honest that confused me. I couldn't see (and still can't see) what benefit you could extract from exif data given your previous history and experience; by this time I would have expected exposure to be second nature, depth of field something you'd been made visually aware of long ago from the scales on the lenses and shutter speeds to be pretty self evident. Clearly I am wrong.
This thread did make me look more closely at exif data; and very surprising it was. I found that the exif data on one photograph I recently edited for a book cover was rather unexpected. Looking first at the jpg straight from the camera (a Sony a7r which I've never used with a flash), I was surprised to find that the illumination was flash; but happily it didn't overpower the outdoor sun (behind me, no fill in needed) because the exif also told me that the non existent flash didn't fire. When it came to looking at the exif data from the final version, which had been through a raw editor and then Photoshop I found that it was taken two years (approx) after the jpg, and didn't have a date that matched the actual date that I did the processing anyway. So I am even less impressed at the reliability of the data.
Obviously (sorry!
) different genres of photography have different priorities; my own interests lie rather heavily on the art rather than record side. I fully appreciate the importance of the technical side of photography, but don't worry too much about it. Getting the exposure right is pretty much of a given; getting the appropriate aperture for the depth of field I want is simple as I use a view camera and can check on screen; what appears sharp there will also appear sharp on a 20x16/A2 print, and that's enough for me. Shutter speed is then determined - although I might sacrifice depth of field for motion stopping if leaves are waving around too much. BUT these decisions won't be apparent from the exif data (which from a view camera doesn't exist); and if I used a camera which did produce exif data, the same is still true.
For my type of photography, I'd have half a dozen or so books that I'd recommend, and none of them are written by or for photographers. These days, you can set the camera on auto and it will get it right most of the time. For far more of the time than a photographer will, in terms of images worth keeping even though technically perfect.
It used to be said that you learned what came out of the end of your pencil rather than what went in through your eyes (or ears); the idea being that thinking about something, expressing it in words or checking your understanding through exercises was what fixed the ideas and cemented the understanding of them. On that basis, carefully looking at and studying images and writing a critique of them (even if never communicated - that's not important) would teach someone far more than studying exif data which is relevant only to the one example, and devoid of any reasoning as to why the choices that were made were made.
Not all "big name" photographers have tried to keep their methods secret; look at the writings of Ansel Adams (and there are many others). Nor do I think that there's any great conspiracy to keep the dark arts within a narrow circle. From reading many of the comments in this thread, it seems far more likely that experienced photographers are aware that the settings contained in exif data won't reveal anything of the "magic" behind the image; that came from the photographer's own understanding of the processes and their own vision. What came in through their eyes and passed through their brains had a bigger influence on the photograph than what came though the lens, because they chose the viewpoint and the lens to reveal what they saw and felt, and then carried it through the subsequent stages. None of this is documented in exif data.
No offence taken, and I'll get over the fact that you won't like any of my non-record photographs because they are taken on film
.
