Maroon Bells and Maroon Lake. Mid-morning. September 24, 2015.
I was asked in an email if it was possible to determine what camera was used to take a particular photo. The answer is yes, provided the camera saved that information in the metadata for the photo, and also provided the metadata has not been stripped out of the photo at some later time.
This article will show you several ways to find the metadata in a photo. But first, a brief summary about metadata. Every time you click the shutter of your camera or smart phone, the image is saved along with some photo information called metadata. Metadata usually includes the date and time of the photo, the camera and lens that was used, the aperture, shutter speed and ISO, along with some other information that might included the GPS coordinates of the photo. The metadata varies from camera to camera, and the metadata can be stripped out of the photo later on. For example, when you post photos on Facebook, Facebook deliberately removes the metadata.
You can access metadata in several ways. I will cover four of them: iPhone, Windows 11, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Bridge.
iPHONE
Using my iPhone, I went to the Maroon Bells photo above on one of my websites and saved it to my phone.
This is how the photo looked on my iPhone. At the bottom of the screen, I clicked on the “i” in a circle (for info) to bring up the metadata.
Here’s the photo as it appeared on the screen of my phone, along with a basic set of metadata, which includes the camera, the lens, the focal length (32mm), the ISO (100), aperture (f/11), shutter speed (1/160th sec), and a map of the location of the photo. This is a pretty quick and simple way to access the metadata.
WINDOWS 11
If you are using Windows software, make sure the photo is on your computer. For illustration purposes, I put the Maroon Bells photo on my desktop. Th desktop backgound happens to be a photo of a Great Gray Owl.
This is the thumbnail of the Maroon Bells photo on my desktop. The steps to find the metadata are easy.
Right click the thumbnail to bring up the General metadata window which usually shows the filename of the photo and the date it was taken. At the top of the window, click “Details” to bring up more information.
You will see a scrollable window with lots of details. Toward the top is “tags”, which is another name for the keywords that some photographers embed in their photos. To see all of the tags, click on some of the visible tags.
You will see a longer list of all the tags/keywords. As a side note, keywords are a great way to find specific photos out of a large number of photos. For more information about using keywords, see the Adobe Bridge articles in the links section below.
If you scroll down the Details window you can see more metadata.
Farther down the Details window you see the camera settings.
Even farther down the Details window you will the the GPS coordinates and altitude of the photo. Not all cameras record GPS information. Most smart phones do record GPS coordinates provided that feature is turned on.
ADOBE PHOTOSHOP
To find metadata using Adobe Photoshop, open the photo in Photoshop. At the top of the Photoshop window click “File”. In the drop down menu that opens, click “File Info”.
A window will open with lots of options on the left side of the window. Choose “Basic” and you will see the name of the photo, keywords attached to the photo, copyright information, and the date the photo was created.
Choose “Camera Data” and you will see the camera, lens, focal length, exposure data, and more.
ADOBE BRIDGE
If you are using Adobe Bridge, navigate to a folder that has the photo. Click the photo and a whole bunch of metadata shows up on the right side of the Bridge window. On the right side of this screen capture you can see the top of the metadata window. Aperture, shutter speed, and ISO are at the upper left. The File Properties section has basic photo information like the date and time of the photo. Farther down you can see a description of the photo (if the photographer added a description) and any keywords (if the photographer added keywords to the photo).
Scroll farther down in the metadata window and you will see additional detailed information about the photo, including Camera Data and GPS data.
DISCREPANCIES
Depending on how the original, out of the camera file was processed, don’t be surprised if you use more than one metadata viewing method and you find some time discrepancies. I used four different methods on the same photo above. They all agree on the camera, the lens (or focal length), and the date of the photo, but not on the exact time the photo was created. They disagree by as much as 32 minutes.
Metadata checked by iPhone: 11:42 am
Windows, General window: 11:10:04 am
Windows, Details window: 11:42 am
Adobe Photoshop: 11:42:11 am
Adobe Bridge: 11:40:53 am
So which time is right? The actual time was around 9:42 am, at least in Colorado. When we drove from Ohio to Colorado I forgot to set the time zone in my Canon DSLR from Eastern to Mountain time.
ADOBE BRIDGE SOFTWARE
Adobe Bridge is my favorite software for downloading photos from my camera, batch renaming them, adding descriptions, and keywording photos to quickly find them later. Adobe Bridge is a free download.
I wrote an introductory series of articles on how to use Adobe Bridge. Check the links below. The first link is an introduction to the series.
Links
“How To” Series: Adventures with Adobe Bridge
Adobe Bridge Basics: How to Download Photos into Folders By Date
Adobe Bridge Basics: How to Batch Rename Photos
Adobe Bridge Basics: How to Batch Keyword Photos
Adobe Bridge Basics: How to Do a Keyword Search