I'm new on this forum (and enjoying it tremendously), but I'm wondering if it's OK to look at the EXIF data on images that are presented here. I'm not talking about images where the poster turned on the "Display EXIF" option. I'm talking about right-clicking on an image and viewing EXIF data that way.
I like to do this occasionally to see what camera and lens were used on a particular image. I don't imagine there's anything unethical about this, but I would like opinions if you care to offer any.
I don't think there is any ethical or etiquette issue involved with seeing the EXIF data. Take a look at the following thread link that gives examples of how to do it.
I don't consider it unethical. The unencrypted information is in the file unless the poster removed it. If posters want to exclude that information for whatever reason, they can do so.
Besides that, I think it would be the rare case indeed where seeing those settings would allow you to somehow steal/reproduce the photographer's mojo/magic/style/experience. There is a lot more to photography than pushing a button and a lot more than camera model, ISO, shutter speed, etc..
From a practical standpoint here on FM, the EXIF info can be helpful to folks learning about photography and it can also be helpful in answering posters' questions when they forget to list the EXIF settings in the thread.
Still, they're the photographers' images and they can manage the EXIF info as they wish. If they include the EXIF info in a posted image though, I will take that as permission from them for me to look at it.
Go for it, theres nothing wrong at all. Sometimes it'll give you an idea of possibly what settings worked well in any given situation. A lot of times in the dedicated image sections of the forum (Landscape, macro, ect.) people purposely have their exif data below the image.
BenV wrote:
Go for it, theres nothing wrong at all...
+1
Of course, the EXIF data will be missing from the "guess which lens..." threads. Well, it'll be missing from most of them. I can remember at least one such thread a few years ago where the EXIF data was included, but EXIF viewers were relatively new. I had one. Great learning experience for the OP.
