I'm aware that you can find out a lot from looking at the exif tags of an image, such as camera make/model and the various settings used to take the picture, but what non-obvious things can you discover about how a photograph was taken using the exif tags.
Almost as important - what are the limitations of the exif tags set by default in cameras? For example, I'm looking back through our wedding pics (we were able to obtain digital copies), and see on a picture that the Exposure Program was 'Normal Program' (as opposed to something like Aperture Priority or Landscape mode). Unless I'm misunderstanting, I can't tell if this means the image was shot using Program or Auto mode on the camera.
Answer
I usually look at EXIF if I found something wrong with the picture and want to learn from it. Plain obvious, but most useful are:
- aperture (is the DOF too deep/too shallow? does my lens really vignette so much at that aperture?)
- shutter speed (was it fast enough to freeze motion/cancel hand shaking? or was it slow enough to get the desired effect?)
- ISO (why is my picture so noisy?)
- focus mode in case of focus errors (didn't I switch to manual incidentally?)
- exposure compensation (didn't I notice the blown highlights?)
- lens used/focal length (do I like/dislike the field of view?)
- time/time between shots (how was the light and how did it change between shots?)
- anything intentionally set to custom value (white balance, metering, self-timer, etc)
- date becomes important later
For JPG shooter the picture settings like white balance/contrast/saturation/sharpness/quality are probably also very important things.
When you own multiple cameras then the camera itself also becomes important.
People who use flashes will probably care about whether it fired and what was the flash exposure compensation.
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