Pentax makernotes : the non-settings stuff

[Beholder3]

Probably you already know, but just for safety:

I just compared the makernotes of four Pentax K-3 files with not touching the camera settings at all. Camera stable in a table. There are a lot of yet undeciphered tags which do change between the four pictures and thus can't have a camera setting behind them:

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[Pentax]        Pentax Shot Info 0x0005         : 111
[Pentax]        Pentax 0x023b                   : ..@§ ..!Àƒ
[Pentax]        Pentax 0x0240                   : .$=œ...xÐ.[...]
[Pentax]        Pentax Unknown Info 0x0008      : 145
[Pentax]        Pentax Unknown Info 0x0009      : 42
[Pentax]        Pentax Unknown Info 0x000c      : 249
[Pentax]        Pentax Unknown Info 0x000e      : 249
[Pentax]        Pentax Unknown Info 0x0010      : 249
[Pentax]        Pentax Unknown Info 0x0012      : 249
[Pentax]        Pentax Unknown Info 0x0018      : 51
[Pentax]        Pentax Unknown Info 0x001a      : 51
[Pentax]        Pentax Unknown Info 0x0020      : 56
[Pentax]        Pentax Unknown Info 0x0022      : 243
[Pentax]        Pentax Unknown Info 0x0023      : 79
[Pentax]        Pentax Unknown Info 0x0024      : 17
[Pentax]        Pentax Unknown Info 0x0026      : 64
[Pentax]        Pentax Unknown Info 0x0038      : 52
[Pentax]        Pentax Unknown Info 0x003e      : 148
[Pentax]        Pentax Unknown Info 0x004a      : 5
[Pentax]        Pentax Unknown Info 0x004c      : 254
[Pentax]        Pentax Unknown Info 0x004d      : 7
[Pentax]        Pentax Unknown Info 0x004e      : 1
[Pentax]        Pentax Unknown Info 0x0050      : 6
[Pentax]        Pentax Unknown Info 0x0056      : 1
[Pentax]        Pentax Unknown Info 0x0058      : 0
[Pentax]        Pentax 0x0404                   : ...... ..·æ.3...Ìüîêz.øê 1ÆêêH¬ê.fºêZ}ƒê€"nêʳwê|[...]
[Pentax]        Pentax 0x0406                   : .... ..·æ.3...Scsuå,,gt<¬ZwtÔ1vŒú qÄæ.p..õsT*ìrìQÛ[...]

They have to be some kind of shot specific data.

The one thing I can mention there is that

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[Pentax]        Pentax Unknown Info 0x000c      : 249
[Pentax]        Pentax Unknown Info 0x000e      : 249
[Pentax]        Pentax Unknown Info 0x0010      : 249
[Pentax]        Pentax Unknown Info 0x0012      : 249
did go up by +1 for each consecutive shot other than the first step where it went +2.

[Phil Harvey]

Yes.  If you take a look at the Pentax.pm code, you will sometimes see notes for unknown information:

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%Image::ExifTool::Pentax::UnknownInfo = (
    %binaryDataAttrs,
    GROUPS => { 0 => 'MakerNotes', 2 => 'Camera' },
    # K10D: first 8 bytes seem to be short integers which change with ISO (value
    # is usually close to ISO/100) possibly smoothing or gain parameters? - PH
    # byte 0-1 - Higher for high color temperatures (red boost or red noise suppression?)
    # byte 6-7 - Higher for low color temperatures (blue boost or blue noise suppression?)
    # also changing are bytes 10,11,14,15
);

I didn't note the incrementing values though.  Interesting.

- Phil