Is there a glossary of camera metadata terms?

Question

I'm trying to learn to interpret my camera's metadata (Exif) tags (if "tags" is the right word) as they appear in Adobe Bridge. I'm seeing some terms I don't understand and I was wondering if there was such a thing as a glossary for this. For example, there's Exposure, Exposure Mode, Exposure Program, Exposure Index, Exposure Bias Value. I can figure out some of them by turning them on and off and seeing if they're connected any terms I recognize, like "aperture priority" or "f11" ... but it would be nice if I could look them all up somewhere, preferably online. Does such a resource exist? I've tried online searches but I may not be using the best keywords. I've looked in my camera's (Nikon D5200) manual and I'm not seeing it there. Thanks for any clues!

Answer 1

There is some standard EXIF data, but there is also a lot that is vendor specific as well. The EXIF standard would be the best place to look for standard values and their meanings. Other values are added by vendors.

Exif standard 2.3 See around page 27 or so for a pretty decent glossary of the official standard tags.

Exiv2 seems to have a pretty good list that includes some of the vendor specific ones as well.

Answer 2

In addition to the EXIF standard, the IPTC photo metadata standard contains lots of definition of field purpose and acceptable values. There's a lot of crossover between EXIF and IPTC field names and purposes, though the IPTC version of the field is typically a little better defined. That said, they are both very open-ended and you'll find a good deal of variety in the content and formatting of the field data.