What a nause.

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Name
Tony
Edit My Images
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I'm not sure where to post this so for the time being, here will have to do.

Anybody else find it a real pain when a poster puts up a great image but you have to click the flickr link to see the technical details?

For sure it gets your view count up but, to my mind, it would be nice to see some basic camera data with the image.
I guess it's what geeky types call "Click Bait"
 
I don't think I've ever looked at the technical details of a photograph - for all I know the camera may have been in auto. Personally I'm more interested in the story behind it / where it was taken, / why they took it than what the camera setting were, but that's just my preference - I've never been a particularly technical photographer, but we're all different!
 
I also have no interest in the technical details of a photo unless I am responding to a plea for help, in which case the technical details are very important.
 
Perhaps drop a line to @Marcel to ask if the forum can have the sort of thing they have at DP Review, where if you hover over the image an EXIF box comes.......................but I think that is only for images hosted on the website???

PS FWIW I will click to look at Flickr and have no concern that, in this instance, it might possibly be clickbait!
 
Same as others. I admire the beauty of the creation and the processing (or not, depending on taste).

I sometimes click through too if I see an image of a subject I like and am interested in settings/equipment, but that's no biggie to me and never thought of it as click bait at all
 
Well in my case I would like to know things like, lens used, aperture, shutter speed, ISO.........................
I'm often trying to recreate similar shots to those posted here as I like many of them.

A little bit of a heads up goes a long way if I'm out trying something specific.
 
I'm often trying to recreate similar shots to those posted here as I like many of them.
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In which case, you'll probably also want to know the latitude, time of day and illumination (lumens or lux) from the sun if outdoors and if indoors wattage of lights, exact position, modifiers used and distance from model. Plus on the camera side, how much was cropped which changes the angle of view from that expected for the focal length.

Personally, I don't care about settings used, just what the image looks like. I do sometimes treat it as a technical exercise in trying to work out exactly how it was done, but only to extend my own range of technqiues/knowledge. I feel that I learn more that way. It was said that you learn what comes out of your pencil more than what goes in through your ears and eyes; meaning that working it out yourself is what really fixes the ideas in your mind.
 
Well in my case I would like to know things like, lens used, aperture, shutter speed, ISO.........................
I'm often trying to recreate similar shots to those posted here as I like many of them.
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Most of those details really won’t help. And you’re missing the more helpful ones.
 
DPR forums have this, but only for images hosted on the site itself. You can hover over and see the exif data - I must admit I do like to view this for certain images, but as Phil says, it's only part of the story
 
And they would be?
These...
In which case, you'll probably also want to know the latitude, time of day and illumination (lumens or lux) from the sun if outdoors and if indoors wattage of lights, exact position, modifiers used and distance from model. Plus on the camera side, how much was cropped which changes the angle of view from that expected for the focal length.
And the why, and how.
The 3 key things that make an image great are:
Composition
Light
Timing
Your eyes and your brain can easily deconstruct those in any image - and they’re infinitely more useful than shutter speed and ISO.

The greatest skill you can learn as a photographer (and you can do it without a camera) is to read an image.
 
Am I the only one who walks out when it's dull and announces, 'there's an ISO 3200 day' :D
I particularly like thick fog for landscape photography.
 
I particularly like thick fog for landscape photography.

I love fog in general for photography, some of my own personal fav images were ones I shot in thick fog. This morning when my daughter was heading off to school it was pretty foggy .... which reminds me, must process that image! ... Yup, I ran back inside to get the camera to get a shot of her cycling off into the fog :D

I’ve been known to walk into a room in an office and say ‘the light is lovely in here’ :confused:

Don't you hate it when you don't have your camera on you at the time thought? - happens me a lot too
 
TBH if you REALLY want to know that kind of detail is it too much to follow the link back? A lot of the time you can get the technical stuff from just looking at the image, as Phil says, although with a modern camera sensor ISO is becoming less and less relevant, likewise shutter speed unless the subject is deliberately blurred. Focal length & aperture you can have a guess at from how much compression of perspective and depth of field there is. Occasionally I'll look up shutter speed in a picture with deliberate blur, but otherwise it's not significant.
 
I am with the OP, maybe it's the geek/engineer in me.
 
It's sometimes nice to know the lens used. Aside from that..... I'm not always interested unless it's something a bit more special - ie Astro ISO, aperture, SS balance, waterfalls/wave movement for the shutter speed maybe.... If I want to know, I'll go & look for it.
 
It must be an engineer thing.

Not necessarily - I’m a CEng. Once I’d got to grips with the technical side of photography, it became more or less intuitive so I let the camera do a lot of the thinking and just focus on the scene or event or composition or unless there is a particular exposure problem to be solved or effect to be achieved. And with the instant feedback afforded by digital cameras I can see whether it’s worked. Granted, this doesn’t work in every situation, but this is where experience, problem solving and technical knowledge combine! Each to their own though, we’re all different.
 
When I first started out, I fixated on the camera settings. It helps to a degree - if I wanted to recreate a panning shot of a racing car, it helps to have an idea of shutter speed. Ditto if it's a long exposure shot of some waves. It can show the focal length. Sometimes the EXIF shows whether the camera was in manual mode or Av/Tv/P, as well as the lens and camera combo. Each time I've looked at a photo and then the EXIF, I try to work out how those settings affected the image and whether I could have recreated the image.

What the EXIF doesn't show is the rationale for the settings. Why did the photographer choose f/11 instead of f/8 or f/16? Why 3 seconds instead of 2 or 4? Did they try different settings and pick the right one? Did they instinctively know? Even then, this is focussing on the technical details.

As @Phil V pointed out, the technical settings don't matter so much as the composition and light. I've stopped looking at EXIF details mostly and looked at just the image. Why put the bird to the right instead of the left? Why is the horizon in the bottom and not the top? Why do I like this image instead of that one?

It's taking me a long time to piece together and that's partly due to the limited time I have to take photos and to look at images. Photography is less science and more art. I've started likening it to cooking. You can eat an awesome cake and (with enough skill) work out what ingredients were used to make it different from a regular cake. The precise quantities of flour, eggs, sugar and other ingredients aren't necessary but you could make a similar product with judgement.
 
When I first started out, I fixated on the camera settings. It helps to a degree - if I wanted to recreate a panning shot of a racing car, it helps to have an idea of shutter speed. Ditto if it's a long exposure shot of some waves. It can show the focal length. Sometimes the EXIF shows whether the camera was in manual mode or Av/Tv/P, as well as the lens and camera combo. Each time I've looked at a photo and then the EXIF, I try to work out how those settings affected the image and whether I could have recreated the image.

What the EXIF doesn't show is the rationale for the settings. Why did the photographer choose f/11 instead of f/8 or f/16? Why 3 seconds instead of 2 or 4? Did they try different settings and pick the right one? Did they instinctively know? Even then, this is focussing on the technical details.

As @Phil V pointed out, the technical settings don't matter so much as the composition and light. I've stopped looking at EXIF details mostly and looked at just the image. Why put the bird to the right instead of the left? Why is the horizon in the bottom and not the top? Why do I like this image instead of that one?

It's taking me a long time to piece together and that's partly due to the limited time I have to take photos and to look at images. Photography is less science and more art. I've started likening it to cooking. You can eat an awesome cake and (with enough skill) work out what ingredients were used to make it different from a regular cake. The precise quantities of flour, eggs, sugar and other ingredients aren't necessary but you could make a similar product with judgement.

If I check the data on an image I admire, and I'm curious about the settings, I'll just ask the photographer. More often than not you'll get an explanation, which can lead to learning even more. Unless of course their reason was they forgot to change settings after shooting some birds or whatever, then it was a fluke :D
 
Me too!

I do find that many engineers tend to only focus on technological solutions to problems when quite often technology is not the best path to pursue.

Aerospace environmental engineer myself currently.
I like to know the details as it helps me to recreate the camera settings that work for a particular shot.
Saves me the time figuring it out.
 
Aerospace environmental engineer myself currently.
I like to know the details as it helps me to recreate the camera settings that work for a particular shot.
Saves me the time figuring it out.
Wow.
I’ve done this before: posted 2 dramatically different images using exactly the same settings.
A camera and your relationship to it are closer to a musical instrument than an appliance.
You absolutely CANT recreate any old image you like purely from exif data.
 
Wow.
I’ve done this before: posted 2 dramatically different images using exactly the same settings.
A camera and your relationship to it are closer to a musical instrument than an appliance.
You absolutely CANT recreate any old image you like purely from exif data.

Wow indeed. Environmental engineering is a pretty awesome job, however.

I'm sure I can't recreate any image I see just from exif.
But shutter speed, aperture, focal length, metering pattern, AF mode.............................. all go a long way to helping.
 
Wow indeed. Environmental engineering is a pretty awesome job, however.

I'm sure I can't recreate any image I see just from exif.
But shutter speed, aperture, focal length, metering pattern, AF mode.............................. all go a long way to helping.
I can’t stop you from believing that - all I can say is that IMHO you’re adding more importance to those things than is needed - you’re putting your efforts into the wrong part of the process.

In the same way that I can show you 2 completely different images shot with the same ‘settings’ I could also show 2 almost* identical images shot by me and a mate of the same rally car that have a different set of settings.

*they’d differ in viewpoint as we’re stood 2 feet apart but 30 feet from the car - so minimal but worth mentioning.

The analogy for engineering would be that you have all of the dimensions to create an exact copy of a component but you’re missing the grade of steel used, so it’s likely to fail.

Photography is about light not settings.
 
EXIF doesn't always tell the whole story (or the truth!)

WTF.jpg

The above is actually a screen grab from a few weeks ago...
 
Photography is about light not settings.

You sure? I thought these days it was about flappy screens, 4K and eye-AF :D

Of course you're right, sadly 'photographers' seem to have lost the plot when it comes to creativity, art and mastering light. it's all so technical and gear oriented now where it seems to matter more how much you spend on gear rather than how much time you spend out using it.
 
You sure? I thought these days it was about flappy screens, 4K and eye-AF :D

Of course you're right, sadly 'photographers' seem to have lost the plot when it comes to creativity, art and mastering light. it's all so technical and gear oriented now where it seems to matter more how much you spend on gear rather than how much time you spend out using it.
It’s not, you’re just putting yourself into that echo chamber.
We have a choice where we go for inspiration and information, I choose not to watch a myriad of knobs trying to outdo each other to collect ‘clicks’.
I’d rather look at some books with amazing pictures in.
 
Back in the 1970s when I started reading Amateur Photographer it always baffled me why the photos often had what would now be the exif data printed in the caption. I never paid any attention to it then, and I don't now.

All the photographs which have made an impact on me have appeared in magazines or books where no technical details are printed. Tell a lie, in Ian Berry's The English (the book which really got me into photography) it does mention what film stock he used and that he used Leicas along with the focal lengths of the lenses (although there is at least one picture which looks like it was taken with a longer lens than those listed). However, I didn't rush out and buy a Leica, although I did use HP5 (I never liked Tri-X anyway).

That said, I sometimes check exif data and the biggest revelation has been that some professionals really do use their dedicated P mode at times. Some even use 'consumer' lenses! :D

IMO it's more important to know which settings YOU require than those which some other fecker has used.
 
It’s not, you’re just putting yourself into that echo chamber.
We have a choice where we go for inspiration and information, I choose not to watch a myriad of knobs trying to outdo each other to collect ‘clicks’.
I’d rather look at some books with amazing pictures in.

It very much is, whether we choose to pay attention to the noise or not, times they are a changing. I wish it was as simple as ignore it and it'll go away I really do. But you only have to look at the products coming out now, how many new features are even aimed at the photographer? Oh, which is now relegated to the 'stills shooter' by the same knobs promoting the 4k and flappy screen.
 
It very much is, whether we choose to pay attention to the noise or not, times they are a changing. I wish it was as simple as ignore it and it'll go away I really do. But you only have to look at the products coming out now, how many new features are even aimed at the photographer? Oh, which is now relegated to the 'stills shooter' by the same knobs promoting the 4k and flappy screen.
Really you are wrong, they are a distraction. Photography is about photographs not gobs on sticks.
I know you’ll disagree, because you’re sucked into that world, but ‘most’ photographers really don’t give a toss about vloggers They’re completely irrelevant to 90% of us.
 
I like to see the exif but... Shock... Horror... I don't feel brainwashed, I don't feel the need to run out and use those exact same settings and I have enough awareness to know that it's also about the subject and the light.

I just think it's nice to know what kit and settings were used. That's all.

I also like a little comment, not some meaningless art speak but something like "It took us all day to get here and we were freezing but it was worth it to get this..."

PS.
When I used to write technical stuff I always used to include what test kit I'd used. Something like "The following test was carried out on xx/xx/xxxx using an Oujifuji Model XYZ which was calibrated on... and the readings obtained were..."
 
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