Thu
Jan 31
1:29pm
The Mystery of the Missing Exif data
I’ll try to keep this short so that it doesn’t look like I’m obsessed by it.
As you’ll have noticed if you’ve had a look at this blog in the last few months, or take a look right now at the Flickr badge in my sidebar, I’m experimenting with moblogging with my Sony Ericsson T650i cameraphone, i.e. I take a photo with it and immediately email it to Flickr, which I’ve set up to automatically post the photo to this blog (that only works sporadically, but that’s another story).
A bit more background info: most digital cameras store metadata about the photos with each photo that you take. The metadata (known as Exif data) includes the camera type, ISO speed, focal length, date and time, plus a bunch of other stuff. Flickr displays that data next to each photo that you post there, which is useful (and interesting) if you take some sort of interest in photography, as I do.
So what’s the mystery?
At the risk of sounding like an uber-geek, the Exif data is missing from the photos that I post to Flickr. Nobody can tell me why (not Flickr, not the Get Satisfaction community, and not Sony Ericsson, at any rate), and I can’t find a straight answer anywhere on the web, which is saying something.
T650i photos from other users are on Flickr with their Exif data intact, and my original photos also have their data, so I reckon one of the following must be happening:
- The phone’s built-in editing software is stripping the metadata from the photo when it’s resizing it before sending the email. There is a setting on the phone to turn Picture Rescaling on or off, but that’s only available on MMSs, not emails.
- My mobile carrier (3) is stripping the data from the photo during its handling of the email.
- A setting either in the metadata or on Flickr is preventing the Exif data from being displayed. There’s a setting in my Flickr profile to Hide/Display Exif data - that’s set to Display. I’m thinking there’s a different setting somewhere.
When I get home tonight I think I’ll try to upload one of my phone photos (an original, un-resized one) via Flickr Uploadr. So more later………
*Update*: As suspected, it’s the phone’s built-in editing software. An original, un-resized photo bluetoothed to my computer then uploaded to Flickr via Uploadr DOES show Exif data, whereas a photo resized by the phone bluetoothed and then uploaded via Uploadr does not. Mystery solved.
From what I understand, Sony Ericsson (among others) phones strip exif data when they resize photos for emailing.
There’s no way around it other than not emailing it from the phone.
Rob.
Comment by Rob — January 31, 2008 @ 3:53 pm
The Exif data is definitely attached to the original photo and is displayed by Flickr if I use Flickr Uploadr to upload the photo.
A Flickr staff member also confirmed what you said, i.e. that the data is stripped when the resize is done before emailing.
I might have a play with the photo settings to take photos at a size that the phone doesn’t want to resize, but that’ll mean I’ll lose quality.
Ironically the phone has a Blog This function that emails the photo to a Blogger blog WITHOUT resizing. But I want to use Flickr, not Blogger. I guess there’s not much I can do for now…
Comment by Marty — January 31, 2008 @ 7:08 pm