Previously I talked about how to add date time stamp to your photos using completely free software. It was written mostly for Microsoft Windows users. The basic method should work on Mac, Linux, or other Unix flavors but there are obviously quite many differences between Windows batch file and shell scripts.
So I found sometime to create a shell script version to do just that for people who don’t use Windows. There is nothing fancy but it should work for typical users. Read More…
Back in the old film days, many compact 35mm cameras came with a feature that can imprint a date/time stamp on the photo. It was typically done by exposing the film with a small embedded LED display that can be turned on or off. It was a great feature for cataloging photographs and making photo records of important events since there isn’t any better way of keeping tracking of the shooting information besides taking old fashioned paper notes. I heard some cameras can record the shooting information on the non-printable film borders but it is not very useful for consumers anyways.
Now most digital cameras do not have this function any more. The shooting information is stored in the digital photo as embedded meta data, or commonly called EXIF tags. We can now keep a lot more information as meta data, you might think we are much better off today. Well, not always. We still print photos. When the photo gets printed on a conventional print paper, none of the meta data gets carried over automatically. Even if you post your photos in an online albumn or photo sharing site, the shooting date/time information may not be easily accessible either. So adding the shooting time information directly on digital photos are still useful for many people.
Many software developers have obviously thought about the problem and created lots of solutions for doing just that: adding time stamp on digital photos using EXIF information. If you are not very computer savvy or simply lack of the desire to challenge yourself, buying one of them may not be a bad choice since most of them cost only about $10 to $30. For the rest of you, here is a completely free solution, for Windows users at least. Unfortunately I don’t run Mac or Linux so I cannot provide a solution for you but it should be easy to hack up a similar solution using all free software.
If you are still with me on this, check out the photo below. At the bottom right corner, there is a string of white numbers that read “2009:04:11 09:12:22″. This is the shooting date and time superimposed on the original photos.
![Easter [with Date Time Stamp]](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3378/3436505763_6e63b108c8.jpg)
Here are the simple steps to add time stamp to jpeg photos. Read More…
What are your favorite lens apertures? After running the stats on 20K+ photos on one of my hard drives, I plotted the data in this chart.
My most popular aperture is f/8. It looks like I am the “set the lens at f/8 and shoot away” type. The fact is that I shoot lots of landscapes and f/8 works well most of the time. I go to extremes of f/2.8 when I want to have very shallow depth of field (DOF). For most family activity and informal portrait shots, I use f/5.6 to ensure sufficient DOF and avoid busy background associated with smaller apertures. Read More…
Nikon shooters with Vibration Reduction (VR) lens may be interested in knowing if the lens VR function was on or off for a particular photo. It is recorded by the camera in the photo but many if not most software do not report this information. The one that works is the new Nikon ViewNX. Nikon ViewNX is rumored to be the replacement of the old Nikon View but the exact status is unclear.
Another option is the more powerful software ExifTool, which was featured earlier. This is mostly a Perl library and a command-line application for power users. It can report a lot more information than a typical software. You can find an example after the jump. Read More…
