My wish

David, to me this seems totally obvious. To take your example, you are standing on that beach in Cornwall. Strange light and cloud conditions. You have x Sigma camera, let's say a fixed prime compact such as the DP0Quattro, to eliminate some variables such as lens mm. You are a huge fan of Lea Tippett's photos on the Cornish coast. You have studied and remembered some photos by Lea with the same camera in similar conditions. Aren't you interested in how Lea approached a similar situation?? I certainly would be!

I find every day, every situation out with my cameras to be a learning experience, even if it's only in my backyard (British English, garden) as yesterday. I try to learn and understand more by studying the work of other photographers whose work I admire, be the photos in Arizona Highways (a great magazine for photos) or online.

I even learn from my own photos. DM2Merrill example from Hawaii. Hmm, ISO 125 too low for achieving a decent shutter speed to eliminate photog blur in a deep green foliage forest.

Or another example, husband and I are going back to the US Southwest later this year. Archaeological sites such as Canyon de Chelly I hope and some touring in Navajo country, including where my husband lived when young. (His parents taught school in Navajo schools during 1940s.) Hopefully Monument Valley! I know Rick Decker has photographed extensively in the US Southwest and I need to study his online albums again.

To think that one cannot learn from others' photographic work, say by EXIF, IMHO, is not true. I am forever a student.

Question not addressed to myself - but what helps me is spot-metering parts of the scene, referring to or remembering something like the below - and just applying the few simple rules of basic exposure:

Reading your response, my sense is that it is trying to persuade me that learning from others is useful. You keep saying we should learn from others, then give examples of scenarios where you have done this. I'm not disputing that. But you don't specifically explain how. What I am trying to ascertain from you is exactly what info in Lea's exif you think will help me. What do I do with that knowledge I wouldn't otherwise have done if I hadn't studied Lea's exif? Because it isn't as obvious to me as it is to you.

Going back to the Cornwall with Lea, scenario, If I look at Lea's shot and see he shot at ISO 100 with a 17mm lens set to f/9, how does that help me? Do I shoot all my shots using the same settings? In general, I think I know how to set up my camera to take a picture, I don't need Lea's help to choose an ISO, aperture etc.

Perhaps if I wanted to learn how to shoot with grads, his advice would be useful. Or if he, say, focus stacked and I wanted to develop that skill. But I don't really understand how knowing his settings would help me. Perhaps if the exif came with a Director's Commentary explaining why he used those settings "I set f/9 and focused on that big rock because I was aiming to...." there would be some value, but the bald settings themselves seem valueless to me.

Interestingly, when we shot together, we stood a ways apart shooting different things, I fail to see how knowing his settings would have helped me. I did notice that there are some things he does differently from me. He still uses Sigmas, I don't. He still uses ND grads, I mostly don't because my cameras have good dynamic range. He likes to shoot pretty wide angle, I don't. He likes to shoot traditionally well stopped down. I've moved to a different style, shooting landscapes wide open with bright primes for shallow depth of field or shooting ultra long exposures of 4 to 8 minutes.

When I've shot with Lea, the lessons I learned were: he's a great guy, I like him a lot, he's a great Cornishman and fan of Phil Vickery, and wellington boots are a must-have accessory for coastal landscapes. Standing in the water his big secret 😁😁😁

The stuff I'd actually want to learn from Lea can't be found in the exif: why did you stand on that particular spot, why did you choose this time of day, why did you set your camera so low for that shot, why did you include that rock and exclude that one over there, how did you keep the sea spray off your lens... etc. Things that have nothing to do with camera settings.

Of the many variables leading to a guru's choice of camera setting, lighting has to be close to, if not at the top of the list. Out of interest, I looked up 'daylight' and found, courtesy of velcdn.azureedge.net:

The range of 3,000 to 100,000 lux is quite large in terms of exposure - about 5EV. My question is "how would post-processed published guru's images' appearance be related to their EXIF, even if available?". For example, just diffuse skylight at 3,000 to 18,000 lux has a range of 2.6EV but how does the guru's EXIF relate to the sky one is currently looking at? With unknown processing, how would anyone know??

Not sure I understand the question, Ted. Can you rephrase?

Sorry!

Suppose a guru posts a perfect studio portrait complete with EXIF. Suppose your correspondent wants to take a portrait in her own studio. How does she know how correct the guru's EXIF settings are for her studio? ... or any of the other kajillion portraits out there to be studied and have their settings remembered.

Back to a diffused skylit landscape:

Shooter A shows up somewhere like that place in Yellowstone and skylight is say 18,000lux.

Shooter B shows up at the same place at the same time of day but it's only 3,000lux.

Both publish similar (after post-processing) pictures complete with EXIF ...

Someone else shows up on a different day ... which EXIF does she choose ??

David, I don't mean to be contentious or snarky or whatever. I wish we'd met in person and you would understand me better. I'm delighted you are such a knowledgeable photographer you feel that you can't learn from others'EXIF or have nothing much to learn from our Sigma gurus. Truly.

On the contrary I had barely taken any film photos before becoming aware of Foveon's research. I have often said I could barely understand Dick Merrill's presentation in 2001 when I first heard and met him.

I wish I'd been on the Tenterden outing (I think you were) with Laurence and the others or that you could have experienced our group shoots in Death Valley after PMAs, where after a day's shoot, the guys were all eagerly studying each others' results. I say guys because Seng and I were the only women, as I recall. Granted in the first outings, they were using prototypes or pre-production gear and I was just on my SD10, trying to pick up hints.
I guess we all have different learning methods.

I think that is my feeling. You look at the exif, you see some settings. Assuming they were ideal settings for the situation they were shot in, how do you translate them to another scenario that may be very different?

Hmmm ....

... wow!! ... David?

Oh dear, I think this is going badly. I clearly haven't explained myself adequately.

It's not that I don't think I have anything to learn from others, course I do. I learn a lot from looking at photos, not exif.

I don't understand what I can learn from someone's exif. My point being that their settings (even if ideal) only worked for the specific moment and conditions they were shot under. For example, if I look at the exif and see that a 17mm lens was used af f/11 with a shutter speed of 1/750th at ISO 100 for a shot at your Death Valley shoot and apply that to a shot taken at 6pm in November in London, I'm likely to be about 5 stops underexposed. That exif won't help me at all.

Generally, I have a very basic approach to settings. I use mirrorless cameras that have a preview histogram. I shoot in (mostly) A mode. I set the aperture that gives me the depth of field I want and the camera sets the shutter speed. I look at the preview histogram and adjust the exposure comp until the histogram is to the right without clipping or the blinkies/zebras flash. I take the shot, then check the post capture histogram. As long as I've captured an ETTR and haven't blown highlights, I'm happy. Otherwise I reshoot. Pretty basic.

Let me turn it around. Can you describe to me a single instance of when you learnt something from someone else's exif and applied it successfully to one of your shots? What did you learn, how did you apply that learning to your shot, and what was the outcome?

That is a question for @SandyF to answer, eh? ...

David: Obviously I wouldn't take a setting from Death Valley and think, ah ha, perfect for London. Yes, this is going badly. Seng and I shot together in Death Valley on several occasions. I learnt a lot from talking settings (thus EXIF) from her. I have Death Valley photos online. You probably can see Seng in some photos. I will not reply further.

Oh dear. I thought it was a straight forward learning point that should be simple to answer. Clearly I was wrong.

Sorry. 😕

EDIT: Let me try one last time. I retired a year ago and my colleagues got me a day shooting birds of prey at a centre at Loch Lomond as a present. The day was run by Jessops with the help of the bird handlers at the centre. I am not a wildlife shooter and didn't really have much of a clue how to photographs fast moving objects.

In the first session I used my Lumix G9 with a 45-150mm zoom (90-300 equivalent) and a 100-300mm (200-600mm equivalent). We shot static portraits for a while, then the handlers got the birds flying from post to post. I was all over the place, chasing the birds, trying to get them in the frame, blasting away on continuous fire.

When we reviewed the first session, my shots were terrible. Most of the time I missed completely or just got a bit of tail or wing. When I got a bird in the frame it was all blurred. I was embarrassed when we did the show and tell.

Then the Jessops lady had a quiet word. She said don't use A mode, use S mode and set a high shutter speed of 1/1000th or even 1/2000th. Set auto ISO. Stop shooting like it was a landscape!

I did, and the results were noisy but massively better. Sharp pictures. I also gradually learned to anticipate the flight and get the birds in the viewfinder. It was a humbling but pleasing day. Learning is important for all of us.

Which is why I'd like to learn from your experiences of studying exif. What am I missing?

ps

I ended up shooting over 6000 shots in one day at Loch Lomond. Never shot at that rate before or since. Most weren't any good, but because of a couple of simple tips, I got a decent set, I think, for a beginner. At least I wasn't embarrassed at the end like I was at the beginning.

whisperingcat.co.uk/galleries/loch-lomond-birds-of-prey-2022/index.html

bridge cameras are awesome. i introduced them to our photography club 10 years ago. i shot a lot of macro attaching canon 500d filters. the photographer of the year a lady won using her fz150 and i took out image of the year with mu fz150.

Thank you for making David's point .,.,. Two photographers in the same place at the same rime and maybe even the same camera models thereby allowing the one to learn from the other via camera settings.

I do wish you luck with your shots made with other people's settings.

Which relieves you from explaining exactly how or what you learn from other photographers' exif shot in different places at different times ...

'bye ...