Thanks
@BabakFarshchian for the comprehensive review of Exif Notes and an interesting article on working with metadata in the context of film photography! It really was a fascinating read.
It looks like you've found a process for using Exif Notes that seems to work most of the time.
I guess using any kind of digital tool to capture your camera's settings and other relevant context somewhat detracts from the authentic and pure analog feel of film photography. Sometimes I (like probably many others) want to just walk around the city with a beautiful camera in my hand and take pictures – and nothing else. In these situations I've decided to leave my phone in my pocket and not let it interrupt the experience. But I am also a stickler for data and sometimes it's fun to record every detail and come back to them when editing my photos. Sadly, however, I'm shooting less and less film nowadays, so actual experiences using my own app are becoming less frequent.
I've been getting an increasing amount of feedback lately and it seems like the number of active users* according to Google Play statistics is somewhere around 1,500. In the last six months the number of active users has gone up by about 100, so I don't expect Exif Notes to get a lot more users than it already has. And that's fine, since it was originally created only for personal use. And if another enhusiastic developer or company decides to create a better application, that's fine as well. After all making money or receiving glory was never a motivation behind Exif Notes. In fact, to this day I haven't set up any donation account and don't plan to, even though this has been widely requested and asked about.
Because of this I feel no huge burden (or even a responsibility) to keep developing and maintaining Exif Notes beyond my own interest or availability of spare time. Also creating new releases and updates is becoming more and more daunting, especially after making changes to the database class. What I'd give for a personal testing team! That is part of the reason why updates aren't as common as they used to be. Some have even requested the project to be made open source, which is a fascinating idea! Though I'm not sure how much this would lessen my workload from what it currently is (likely the opposite), because even then I would have to validate and approve any changes made by another developer. Then there's the question of picking a license, making the source code public etc.
That being said, there are still features and improvements I wish to introduce and I already have a new minor release in the pipeline (just some small bug fixes, don't get too excited). And new features have been based on user feedback for a while now actually. But the increasing amount of users and emails I get also means that unfortunately I cannot personally respond to every piece of feedback I get. Still, I try to read through them all. Hopefully this is where this thread and community of sorts comes in as well. When it comes to development sprints, they will mostly happen around the major vacation or holiday seasons: midsummer, Christmas and so on. And looking at the release history from the last two years, only a couple major updates have happened each year.
Phew, this post turned out a lot longer than I initially thought. I just felt like sharing some of my current mindset surrounding Exif Notes at this time. I hope you are all staying safe during the pandemic and that you nevertheless have a great summer! It's actually just starting to warm up here in Finland and I'd say it's about time.
*Google Play defines "active user" as someone who has the app installed via Play Store on their device and that the device has had an internet connection or was turned on at least once in the last 30 days. So my guess is that the number of let's say serious users is much much lower.