I recently got a new camera. It’s not the first one I’ve owned, but it is by far the nicest one. While I’ve been learning about the new camera, I was thinking about digital images and how to track them.

I love to take pictures and I have taken plenty of family over the years. I have also inherited a lot of pictures. In a few posts, I’ve talked about the process I use for the older pictures. You can read about it here and here.

I’ve mentioned some of the challenges that can occur with pictures, talking about nicknames in this post. In this post, I talked about trying to find a location.

This picture of my Grandmother Kellogg (the girl on the right) is undated and has a nickname!
(Martin Falbisoner, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Around 1914, Kodak introduced the Autographic Camera. It provided a way to write on the film. This Brownie 2 camera had this feature.

Sometime starting in the 1970s a date was stamped on the back of film when it was developed. In the 1990s, cameras started adding the date themselves.

Today’s digital cameras can put a lot of information on the picture. This Metadata can take several formats depending on the camera and it’s features.

The most common format in the US is the EXIF -Exchangeable Image File Format. It has support for camera settings (shutter speed, aperture, ISO), date/time, orientation, camera make and model, and GPS data. This information is only used for photography and it can be edited. There are other formats and you can find out more about them on Photo Metadata . There is some good information about preserving your digital legacy at the Library of Congress here.

I haven’t answered my own questions yet about how to add information to a photograph such as the people who are in it. Looks like I’ve found some new rabbit holes to explore.

Can’t wait to see what my new camera can do with scenes like this.