Panasonic:InternalSerialNumber

[herb]

Hello Phil,

some days ago I got an image taken by a Panasonic DMC-TZ5. As always I als was looking into its metadata I have seen the following very small problem with the InternalSerialNumber stored inside the makernotes:

exiftool -makernotes:internalserialnumber <image> reports:
   Internal Serial Number          : (F60) 2008:11:10 no. 0498

exiftool -makernotes:internalserialnumber -n <image> reports:
   Internal Serial Number          : F600811100498ÿ‚

The additional non writeable characters are: 0xFF82

Do you have an explanation why this can happen?
On one hand it is a small problem, on the other hand I am very nosey.

Best regards
Herb

[Phil Harvey]

If you look at this with -v3, you will see the serial number string ends with the bytes 00 ff 82.  It could be that 00 is the string terminator, and ff 82 is just left-over garbage that wasn't zeroed out from this field.

- Phil

[herb]

Hello Phil,

thanks for your help and sorry for making so much noise.
I did not think, that Panansonic does write it erroneous.

Best regards
Herb