New app for making "exif notes"

Just stumbled across this app/thread, and it looks great! However, I don't really bother keeping such detailed shooting notes with roll film. I do keep such notes when shooting large format, however. I'd love an app like this for large format notes, as writing in a small notebook is annoying/tedious/difficult when I'm standing next to a tripod. The only issue is that the whole concept of "rolls" doesn't really apply to LF, so the data organization would need to be somewhat different.

I tried dictating into my video recording on my cell phone. That way I can get a quick shot of what I took plus record all the pertinent info. I transcribe it to paper when I get home.

Alan Edward Klein said:

I tried dictating into my video recording on my cell phone. That way I can get a quick shot of what I took plus record all the pertinent info. I transcribe it to paper when I get home.

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I actually felt tempted to start using dictation myself after frustration during my last outing. Only issue there is that I might need 2-3 recordings to capture all the details concisely (as I think about them at different points during the setup process), and I might have to listen to myself many times to correctly transcribe it all back down to paper.
Still, its probably a lot easier to just say "1/20/2020 at 10:15am, 150mm lens, metered EV x on the rocks and EV y on the moss, f/45, 30 second calculated exposure which is 120 seconds with reciprocity. Slight front rise and tilt. Film holder 42 with Delta 100" (or some disorganized variation on that rambling), rather than to actually jot it all down in my notebook.

I do use an AnalogBook for this at least, which is laid out quite nicely. Only problem is that its hard to write in while standing, especially near the bottom of the page. And a lot of info is kinda boilerplate, where selecting from a drop-down list would make this process go a lot faster.

Likewise, I just stumbled across this. I've been using a note taking app on my phone for a long time but this is a much neater way of doing things.

I use a similar app for iOS and find it invaluable. the only problem is the creator hasn't made any changes in over two years, and there are a few annoying issues that I don't like. I've considered writing my own app, but I don't really have the time to spare.

So I've played with EXIF Notes a little bit as part of a overall evaluation of whether android could replace ios for me. And thought I'd make a couple small comments for the developer to consider. To start with it is more flexible than the iOS app I use which has some benefits. For example the iOS app doesn't let me set the cameras shutter speed range, so on cameras that max out at 1/500, the app waists a lot of space going up to 1/8000. Also the iOS app lets you set whole stop, half stop, third stop, but its set on the camera record and applies to both the camera and the lens, while most of my cameras are whole stop and their lenses are half stop. I like that EXIF Notes keeps those settings separate.

Two comments/suggestions though:

- when I create a new roll, I have to specify 35mm/120, etc. It seems I should be able to set that on the camera so its automatic when I set the camera.

- the area where the iOS app shines is the UI for recording each shot. EXIF Notes requires me to tap the new frame button which pops up a dialog to make all the correct settings, then hit save. Fortunately it remembers most settings from the previous frame, so it not too onerous, but the iOS app lets me change the state of all the camera settings, before recording a shot. So when I change a lens, I change it on the app immediately. When I want to record a shot, I just hit the virtual shutter button, and it instantly records the shot with all the current state information. So if I take three shots in a row with all the same settings, on the app I may have to adjust lens, shutter, aperture for the first shot, but subsequent shots are just hitting the shutter button. Also all of the camera state settings (lens, shutter, aperture, zoom, etc) are visible on the page with no scrolling, and are manipulatable from that page without pop-ups. Now the iOS app goes overboard and tries to make the widgets look like skeuomorphic camera controls, but each control is a simple drag to change. This makes it very fast to use.

Hello!

I've encountered a problem with special characters - some time ago I was able to put special Latvian characters (ĀĒĪŠĶĻŽŅ) into EXIF with no problems, but now it just doesn't work - do you have an idea why and maybe there's something I can do at my end?

Ivo Stunga said:

Hello!

I've encountered a problem with special characters - some time ago I was able to put special Latvian characters (ĀĒĪŠĶĻŽŅ) into EXIF with no problems, but now it just doesn't work - do you have an idea why and maybe there's something I can do at my end?

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Hi! When you export the ExifTool commands from Exif Notes, do the commands look the same as they have previously or are the ExifTool commands different/corrupted in some way? If the commands have remained the same and there's nothing wrong with them per se, then maybe there's an issue with ExifTool itself.

Actually they look ok and I don't remember updating the exiftool or your wonderful app. One day it just went South. Maybe it's a Windows thing.

Ivo Stunga said:

Actually they look ok and I don't remember updating the exiftool or your wonderful app. One day it just went South. Maybe it's a Windows thing.

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Have you tried checking the images' EXIF data using ExifTool instead of Windows? Maybe Windows just shows the EXIF data incorrectly...

Sorry, I should've stated earlier that I work in Lightroom with scans and LR displays the same - letters with diacritics are turned into regular ones.

I've tried to make sense yesterday of exiftool translation options, but found my brain to be lacking : D

Actually if I think about it, W7 seems to be the one to blame - a year or so ago LR shat himself on files with diacritics in filenames - database got corrupted, corrupted files couldn't be deleted and at Import they're seen as new to import, and the only fix was to rename without diacritics and point LR to the fixed filename.

Should do a reinstall to see if that fixes it...

I love this app, I've been using it for all of my film shots for a while now. I just have a couple of tiny things I wish were different. I use leading zeros on my filenames rather than underscores, its kind of annoying to have to go through and replace these for every roll so I'd appreciate the option to change that. Also I recently noticed that while the dates in the app are in the correct order (YYYY-MM-DD of course), you don't include leading zeros here which leads to things like 2020-5-6, which just looks ugly. Again these are minor things but I love the app and would appreciate it if you made these minor changes. If the app was on github I'd happily make a pull request for these things (although android dev isn't really my area so it might take me a while). Also if you had a donate app in the app store or something I'd send you a couple of quid.

Thanks again

Hello,

I would also have a few suggestions.
Would it be possible to synchronize data from the application with any storage? (eg dropbox) When using multiple devices, an export and import must be done each time. It would also be great for backups. And it would be a good idea to include ISO settings in every shot (some users use Diafine developers and do push / pull on one role).

Thank you Popmar

Hi everyone. I just published a review of this app on 35mmc.com. Here is the link: https://www.35mmc.com/21/05/2020/br...metadata-with-exif-notes-by-babak-farshchian/

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.

Thanks Tommi @team_player for the honest "road map" post. I think what you have done with this app is amazing. I also understand that doing this as a hobby has its limits. I think there is the additional "elephant in the room," that analog photography is for many a fad, a fashion or trend currently living in Instagram and the like.Who knows how long it will continue. This makes developers like you reflect about the return on the investment you put in developing the app further. I would hate to see this app die. I allow myself to suggest two inputs to your roadmap.

1) Don't shy away from open source. OS does not mean that you inevitably get more to do. I think OS advantage is that it can allow others to create derivatives of your app. Licenses like Apache will allow this without you loosing the right to your own code. Others with fresh blood can take your code and based on that create extensions and improvements. You don't need to do more work than just selecting a license for your code that allows this kind of derivative development, and releasing the code in e.g. GitHub (though some documentation work might be needed). I think this can guarantee a future for the app, and let new ideas flow in.

2) I would also love to see a release where you open your data format and implement export functions for all the data base, including the gear DB. Some of this work is being done in an OS project called AnalogExif that I mention in my article. I have started experimenting with this desktop app. It works fine but the missing link is access to data that I collect with my mobile phone using Exif Notes. This might be a good release for next Xmas

Thanks again for a wonderful app and keep up the good work! And take care.

Hello,

I would like to point out a bug. The next time you add a frame, it will not remember the aperture step. Although I have "aperture increments" 1 stop in gear, it is 1/3 stop in "frame". Shutter speed does not report this bug.

Thanks Pop

Just wanted to say thanks for this great app! Have been using it for about a year and a half or so, really like it a lot!

I would like to add my experience to Popmar's post: In my use, the app does remember the aperture step (and shutter speed as well) from the previous frame when adding a new frame, same with chosen filters etc.
However, with this config:
- Camera: Exposure increments 1/3 stop
- Lens: Aperture: 1 stop, shutter 1 stop

When adding a frame, the app still lets me select aperture increments of 1/3 stop.
Probably because I have configured in the app that my camera has exposure compensation in 1/3 stop increments.
However, in real life my camera (Olympus OM-2) will always compensate on shutter speed because auto exposure is always aperture priority and my lenses only have full f-stop selection.

And perhaps a suggestion for a feature: it could be a nice feature if the app would allow to select a non-full-stop starting aperture per lens (if that makes sense).
E.g. my lenses all have full stop increments, but some of them start at f/1.8, f/3.5 or f/5.0 and the next stop on the lens would be a full f-stop, like my 85-250mm has aperture selections f/5 - f/8 - f/11 - f/16 - f/22 - f/32.
I do realise that this might be difficult to implement, and I can perfectly work around that by letting the lens start at f/5.6 and then manually correct the data after exporting.

Again, I'm very happy with the app as it is so please see my post purely as positive feedback!

Hello,

that's what it's about. One lens has steps of 1EV, others of 1/3EV. Yes, the new frame copies the settings of the previous one (that's great), but if I want to change the aperture, it should respect the step settings according to the selected lens. Unfortunately there is always a 1/3EV step. It's a bug brought by a new version of the apk, previous versions were fine !!!

Pop

Had the same issue, switched to older version a while ago. But it works for me now, after migrating to a new phone - maybe it's fixed in Beta?

Hey, how are things?

I have a quick idea: it would be nice for the app to save what's entered upon exiting the details input window. Accidental back gestures and button presses do happen

Ivo Stunga said:

Hey, how are things?

I have a quick idea: it would be nice for the app to save what's entered upon exiting the details input window. Accidental back gestures and button presses do happen

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Hi Ivo! Sorry that I missed your message, apparently my email notifications on this thread no longer work.

Although there's been quite a long pause in the development of Exif Notes, I'm glad to say that just today I've released version 1.17.0. The biggest change in this version from the user's perspective is the ability to set fixed lens cameras in the gear menu. This removes the extra step of having to define the lens for frames added with that camera. Check it out and let me know how well it works. This release is still in the beta channel, so not yet released to production. Also I just published it, so it might take some time for it to be available for download.

Hi, nice hearing from you and I'll look into it.
And might I add one more suggestion? I like to automate my phone sensors - have set Tasker profile to turn Location On only when certain listed apps are opened in foreground. It works in all apps I'm using seamlessly, but Exif Notes gives warning about GPS being turned off each time the app is started (checks instantly I guess, before Tasker manages to turn the sensor on), could that be fixed?

Hi,

I have installed trial version 1.17 and so far everything is working properly (it seems).
... I repeat my question I wrote two years ago:
Wouldn't it be possible to automatically store (synchronize) data in the cloud? (google, dropbox, etc.) On the one hand, this would automatically back up data in the event of a device failure, on the other hand, it would be possible to share the data with multiple devices (some people use multiple phones or combine them with a tablet ....)

Thanks Pop