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I have been looking for the serial number of my Canon T5i. I have searched around the Internet and the Internet tends to say that the serial number is on the bottom of the camera and on the box. Now, I would be all set other then the fact that (a) the stamp on the bottom of the camera is smudged and 100% unreadable, and (b) the box is long gone. Is there anywhere else that I can find the serial number of my camera?

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    The low resolution and moire makes your photo totally illegible in terms of seeing the data. Can you take a screen shot and generate a .png using Paint?
    – Michael C
    Sep 1, 2015 at 19:11
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    Possible duplicate of photo.stackexchange.com/questions/67523/…
    – Olivier
    Sep 1, 2015 at 19:53
  • Not a duplicate because the methods that don't work with the G1X, which doesn't seem to include the serial number in the EXIF info, do work with EOS cameras.
    – Michael C
    Sep 1, 2015 at 20:09
  • @MichaelClark, indeed, it seems the G1X doesn't include the serial, but the answer is still the same for all (Canon) users searching to recover the Serial Number from EXIF or other metadata.
    – Olivier
    Sep 2, 2015 at 6:03
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    There's a significant enough difference in the the way the Canon EOS cameras and the non-EOS cameras handle the serial number vis a vis EXIF to make it two totally different questions. If the other question were about another EOS model, I would agree with you, since the way EOS cameras record the serial number in the EXIF is the same. But non-EOS cameras often don't include the serial number in the maker notes at all, so it is an entirely different situation with entirely different solutions as starting points.
    – Michael C
    Sep 2, 2015 at 6:32

6 Answers 6

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Most image viewers and editors will allow you to view the EXIF info included in the photos. Some do include more and others include less of the information contained in the EXIF data. Most Adobe products tend to strip the "maker notes" section of the EXIF when exporting the image to another format (e.g. .dng, .jpeg, etc.). They may ignore the serial number when displaying EXIF info even when the data is still there in an imported image.

If you can't get the serial number to display using the "Camera Data" in Photoshop Elements 10, you have a few other options.

Digital Photo Professional is included on the disc of applications shipped with every Canon DSLR. It is a fairly straightforward process to view the serial number of an EOS camera from the EXIF of an image made with that camera using DPP.

Select an image, click the Info button and a new window will open displaying the EXIF info. Scroll all the way down to the bottom and the Camera Body Number will be displayed as the next to last item.

screenshot 1

A free image viewer that displays the serial number in the EXIF info is Irfanview. (To open and display raw .cr2 files you will need to install the main program and the plugin. Click on the "plugin" link on the main page and follow the instructions for CRW under the *Plugins updated after the version 4.0.)

With Irfan view, just open an image, click the info button (the blue circle with a script "i" in the middle), then click on the EXIF info button in the lower left corner of the information window.

screenshot 2

Scroll about halfway down and you will see the camera's serial number.

enter image description here

Note: Some EXIF viewers may display some Canon Camera Body Number/Serial Number values as a hybrid hex/decimal notation. The actual value recorded in the EXIF "maker notes" section for at least some Canon cameras seems to be encoded in such a hybrid format. When I wrote this answer in early 2014 Jeffrey's EXIF viewer displayed the undecoded hybrid number for an EOS 50D, a 7D, and a 5D Mark II. By late 2015 when this answer was written, Irfanview displays the same number stamped on the body for a 7D Mark II and 5D Mark III. For the same 50D, Irfanview still displays the "Serial Number" as "1520708485 (5AA411141)". The number stamped on the bottom of the body is the first number, while the number in parenthesis is the encoded hybrid value that actually appears in the EXIF Info. Images from the older 7D and 5D Mark II also displays both values, while images from the newer 5D Mark III and 7D Mark II only display the stamped serial number with no "encoded" hybrid hex/decimal value in parentheses.

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You can use free exiftool http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/index.html

exiftool -serialnumber YourOutOfCameraJPEG.jpg
exiftool -serialnumber YourRawFile.cr2

or some exiftool-based metadata viewer, for the list and links scroll the exiftool home page down to "Related Utilities"

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In Digital Photo Professional 4, you can import a photo that was taken on your camera, then click Command+I or go to View>Info, and all the way at the bottom of the opened window it says "Camera Body No.". The number next to that is the serial number. By the way, this is on Macintosh.

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  • DPP 4 is not compatible with the EOS T5i is it? Last time I checked all of the Rebels still needed to use DPP3
    – Michael C
    Sep 1, 2015 at 20:04
  • I have the t5i and it works just fine with DPP4.
    – kazanaki
    Sep 2, 2015 at 14:59
  • @MichaelClark - I actually just did this on DDP 4
    – Daniel
    Sep 2, 2015 at 17:43
  • It seems when Canon introduced DPP 4 they started with the newest models only. As they introduced updates for other various reasons (newer camera bodies introduced, bug fixes, etc.) they also began adding the most recent cameras not already compatible and worked their way backwards until most of the Digital bodies in the EOS system are now compatible with DPP 4.
    – Michael C
    Oct 31, 2019 at 5:39
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The serial number should be included in your photo metadata. Most image editors (e.g. Photoshop, Lightroom) allow you to view this information. In Photoshop, open an image taken with the camera and choose File > File info… and click on 'Camera Data'. The serial number is displayed next to 'S/N'. In Lightroom, view the image in the Library module and use the 'Metadata' panel in the right hand side.

If you don't have access to this software, and your current software doesn't allow you to view this information, you may want to download a free trial. If it's still not visible, then I'd suggest the information isn't being stored with the photographs for your model of camera.

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  • can this be done in PS Elements 10?
    – Daniel
    Sep 1, 2015 at 19:01
  • As far as I can tell, it should be in the same place as in Photoshop. helpx.adobe.com/photoshop-elements/using/file-information.html
    – user456
    Sep 1, 2015 at 19:02
  • Did you see my edit?
    – Daniel
    Sep 1, 2015 at 19:07
  • @Dopapp It can be seen with just about any image viewer/editor that includes an "info" button or "exif info" button. For PSE 10 use Menu-->File-->File Info.
    – Michael C
    Sep 1, 2015 at 19:09
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    All Canon EOS cameras store the serial/body number in the maker notes section of the EXIF info. Just because most Adobe products ignore the maker notes doesn't mean it isn't there.
    – Michael C
    Sep 1, 2015 at 22:26
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Some retailers include the serial number on the invoice when you purchase a camera. Just another possibility, if you still have it...

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Just another idea out of the box:

(a) the stamp on the bottom of the camera is smudged and 100% unreadable,

I have a camera where anybody would swear that it never had a serial number since the respective label is just blank. Take a good sharp photograph of the blank label at lowest ISO setting, preferably with a large sensor camera in order to have low noise, crop it to contain just the blank part, do histogram equalisation and, well, there it is again.

I was quite surprised. Of course it requires you to be wrong about the "100% unreadable" part, but at least with my camera, it turned out I was wrong.

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