Camera Maker Notes

[nmakova]

Hello,

I have a question regarding Maker Notes metadata information. EXIFTool shows 100-200 fields for the Nikon Maker Notes section. Other applications show less fields like 30-40. Is there any specification which explains what fields should be available in the Maker Notes?

[Phil Harvey]

The most complete documentation of the Nikon maker notes may be found in the ExifTool Nikon tag names documentation, but this doesn't tell you what tags should be available for the various camera models.  Nikon doesn't document this, so it has taken a lot of detective work to decode the tags you seen in this list.  I can tell you that even this list is far from complete, and there is still a lot of information which is yet to be discovered in the Nikon maker notes.

- Phil

[nmakova]

Thank you for the information! But is there any "basic" set of fields which should be shown in the Maker Notes section? I just want to display some general information in it.

[Phil Harvey]

But is there any "basic" set of fields which should be shown in the Maker Notes section?

The information available depends greatly on the camera make/model.  Of the information not available in regular EXIF, people seem to be most interested in things like LensID, ShutterCount, SerialNumber, CameraTemperature and various camera-specific settings.  However, you will find a few Shortcut tags which show basic camera information equivalent to that shown by the manufacture's software for a couple of camera makes.

- Phil