![]() ![]() You can see what film stock is loaded on which camera, and how many frames are already shot on each roll. In this screenshot from Exif Notes you can see some of my currently active rolls of films loaded on my cameras. For this digital roll, you register a name, emulsion type, which camera it is loaded on (confession: I have many of them), whether it is a 135mm or 120 film, ISO value, whether you pushed or pulled the film, etc. When you load a roll of film into your camera, you start Exif Notes and create a “digital roll” inside the app. But what is Exif Notes, really?Įxif Notes is an app that helps you register metadata about each roll of film and each frame in each roll. Of course, I also hope that you will read this text and judge the usefulness of such an app in your own workflow. My aim is to write down my experience so that the developers of these tools can consider them when making their future versions. I merely wanted to reflect on my experience of juggling between two worlds, one with and one without metadata, and why I do it. The reason I wrote this text is not to do a review of Exif Notes per se. At that time, it was the most mature app available. Another one is Analog Memo that was presented on this web site a while ago. Exif Notes is only an example of this kind of app. I tried a couple of times, but I gave up because it was cumbersome.įast forward 20 years: Nowadays, I never leave home without an analog camera and my smartphone with Exif Notes installed! Exif Notes is an Exif metadata registration app for Android developed by Tommi Hirvonen. Of course, I could have taken some paper notes (Ansel Adams did). Now I could see what exactly I had done when taking a photo, and learn from my mistakes. The fact that digital images had Exif data was one of the main reasons I immediately embraced digital photography. I was frustrated because I could not see what mistakes I had made when the resulting images were disappointing –which happened all the time. I remember when I started taking photos in the 80s with a Canon AE-1. This metadata (it is called metadata because it is data about data, the data here being the photograph itself) is written automatically into the image file by the camera when you take the photo. These can be the date and the time of the day you took that photo, the camera and the lens you used to shoot it, the shutter speed and aperture value you used, whether you used a flash, and loads of other information. If you look at a digital photo in Lightroom –or any decent photo viewer –you can easily see the metadata for each photo. In addition to being useful in automation, metadata are valuable pedagogical tools. Exif Notes allows me to “inject” metadata into the analog part of my photography world. The piece of the puzzle that makes my hybrid photography make sense to me and not drive me nuts is metadata. The hallmark of the digital is data, especially metadata. I have a dozen apps on my smartphone that I actively use in my analog photography, such as Exif Notes. While I love the aesthetics of film and the tactile and fully controllable handling of old gear, I also like the versatility of the digital. When combining digital and analog photography, good ideas can flow in both directions. I enjoy my analog photos by myself and share them on Instagram and Flickr for family and friends to see I shoot analog photos and scan them into Lightroom, where I also have my digital photos. ![]() This fascination for the digital, and now analog photography, means that my photography world is a hybrid one. I work with computers and digitalization (as a teacher and researcher) and am fascinated by the possibilities offered by digital tools. This does not mean that I don’t shoot digital photos anymore. I have now become an analog-first hobby photographer. My personal reasons, when I returned to analog photography three years ago, were a combination of my fascination for cameras as creative tools and the aesthetics of old glass and various emulsions. We all have our own reasons for picking up analog photography in a world that goes increasingly digital, and a lot has been written about these. Exif Notes allows me to bring modern metadata into my analog photography. I want to talk about one of them in this post. I use several modern tools to bridge the gap between my analog and digital worlds. I shoot with 60 years old analog and 6 years old digital cameras, and I shoot classic lenses on digital cameras. Some see added value and pleasure in analog photography but don’t quite want to leave the digital world. ![]() Some people enter analog photography to escape the digital. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |