Metadata pertaining to analogue photography

[AgBr]

I am completely new to this forum, although I have in reality used exiftool a great deal through Adobe Lightroom. It is the first time, however, that I am trying to use it with CLI in Linux. What a brilliant invention!

When I made a search for "exiftool film type" a question from 2012 surfaced. It was from the Exiftool GUI part of this forum and the poster asked about metadata, which would be useful when editing metadata for an image originally shot on film and subsequently digitised by a scanner. I am aware that such metadata currently don't exist, but I would like to enquire whether it would be possible to add them in a future version of Exiftool? Analogue photography is, after all, undergoing a certain renaissance these years 

As to which categories would be relevant, some of which are already in Exiftool I think, I couldn't agree more with the original post, which I have quoted below.

Kind regards,
Peter

Hi,

I need some basic information about writing exif data into VueScan files like TIFF, TIFF-RAW and DNG-RAW with ExifToolGUI.

Q1:
How can I write the following exif data into VueScan files (TIFF, TIFF-RAW and DNG-RAW)?
   film manufacturer (Fujichrome)
   film type (Velvia 50)
   film code (RVP50)
   film speed (ISO50/18°)
   emulsion (425678)
   date taken
   camera
   focal lenghth
   aperture
   shutter speed
   exposure compensation
   distance
   filter
   tripod

Q2:
Is there any danger to damage the image data in VueScan files (TIFF, TIFF-RAW and DNG-RAW) by writing exif data into these files?
   
Thanks for help

[StarGeek]

The thing is, as mentioned in BogdanH's reply, such tags don't exist.  There's no standard to follow for these items.  And I don't know if Phil really wants to create standards for every bit of data.

But there are options.  As mentioned by BogdanH, you can create your own tags in XMP (or other metadata blocks, but XMP is the best bet).  The downside to doing so is that only you will be able to deal with them.  Any DAM (Digital Asset Management) program you use won't be able to read them.  You'll only be able to search/sort using something like exiftool and creating your own scripts/setup.

The other option is to re-purpose or expand the use of another tag.  My goto tag for such things is HierarchicalSubject.  It is usually well supported by most DAM software and can easily fulfill the example tag list from that old post (though many of them are covered by standard tags).  As an example, you can see this previous post by me where I use it to embed Time Zone ID and Time Zone Name data.  I literally have no use for this data but the script I run can pull it easily with other data I'm grabbing, so I go ahead and add it. And because I add it to HierarchicalSubject, it gives me an easy way to look through it.

[AgBr]

@StarGeek, many thanks for your reply!

I fully understand that the tags mentioned do not exist, and although I am not too familiar with creating tags in XMP, I suppose I could learn. However, as you say, there is currently no standard and DAM programs won't be able use them, so they will be useful to me only. In some contexts, it is important to be able to share metadata, along with the images, with other people. Therefore, I believe my best bet would be to repurpose existing tags as you have also explained.

However, I do believe that it would be relatively easy to agree on some kind of standard set of tags regarding image files, which are the result of scanning a photo shot on film (or digitising the analogue photo with a digital camera). I think it would be fantastic if this could be envisaged for further developments of Exiftool, hoping that such tags could gain wider recognition over time. Many, if not most of these tags, were mentioned in GL's post six years ago.

If I understand this correctly, Exiftool is mainly focussed on altering metadata, which are recorded by the camera/scanner/other device that created the image file. There are, however, data which even digital cameras don't record, for example whether a tripod was used. 

Best regards,
Peter