Storing EXIF information in Database

Question

What's the best way to store EXIF data from photos in a Database (MySQL in my case). This is for a photo sharing site.

What are the most important Tags, and what are discardable?

Answer 1

It's hard for us to determine what is important for you. One approach might be to store all the properties in a table created something like this (approximate SQL syntax):

create table exif_info (
    photo_id integer,
    name varchar,
    value varchar
);

Each row in this table associates one EXIF property with one photo. So you would need a whole bunch of rows to hold all the EXIF properties for a single photo, but this is exactly what relational databases are good at.

In this way, you can store all the available information without having to decide now what might be important later.

Answer 2

For your second question...

Picasa

• Date and time that the photo was taken
• Camera make & model
• Resolution
• Orientation
• Focal length
• Aperture
• ISO speed
• GPS latitude and longitude

Flickr

• Camera
• Exposure
• Aperture
• Focal Length
• ISO Speed
• Exposure Bias
• Flash