ExposurePlot

We possess some basic knowledge about photography and photo editing, but occasionally we encounter a photography-related program that we don't fully understand. Fortunately, one of us is married to a photographer, and he comes in pretty handy when we have questions. So it went with ExposurePlot. We understood that the program displayed EXIF info for groups of images in a bar graph format, but we didn't understand why.

"I don't understand why, either," said our photographer-husband as we looked at ExposurePlot together. The Overview tab of the program was displaying four bar graphs depicting the frequency with which each lens length, ISO, aperture, and shutter speed occurred in a group of photos that we had taken. "I mean, the program only works with JPEGs, and anyone who's interested in this kind of information is shooting in raw. I guess if someone were looking to buy an entry-level SLR and wanted to evaluate how they've been shooting, it would be OK. But there are many programs out there that do this that are way more sophisticated." Still, we agreed that if someone were interested in viewing this kind of data for JPEGs, ExposurePlot worked well enough. The program's interface is plain, with an explorer pane to the left that allows users to navigate to the images they want to analyze. The Overview tab displays the four resulting graphs, and each graph can also be viewed individually in a tab of its own. Results can be filtered by camera make and model, or users can search maker notes. The program's built-in Help file could stand to be a little more detailed, especially for novice users who aren't sure what they're looking at. Overall, the program works as it's supposed to, but we're not sure it offers features that would be particularly valuable to any photographers.

ExposurePlot comes as a ZIP file. It installs politely but leaves a folder behind upon removal. We recommend this program with reservations.