ExifPixel
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Exposure Program

0x8822

Also: ExposureProgram

Which shooting mode was used.

This tag records the mode the camera was in: Manual (1), Program AE (2), Aperture-priority (3), Shutter-priority (4) and more. It reveals how much control the photographer handed to the camera.

What the stored number means

Exposure Program is an enumeration: the file holds a bare integer and the reader looks it up. These are the values, and the wording is the wording the viewer on this site will print.

ValueShown as
0Not defined
1Manual
2Normal program
3Aperture priority
4Shutter priority
5Creative program
6Action program
7Portrait mode
8Landscape mode
Where it misleads

Firmware fills this in inconsistently. Plenty of bodies write 0 (Not defined) no matter which mode the dial was on, and many phones write 2 (Normal program) for every photo they take. Treat a value here as something the firmware asserted rather than something that was observed.

Example value
3 — Aperture priority

Want to see this tag in your own photo? Open the EXIF Viewer and drop an image — every tag is decoded in your browser. To take this tag back out again, remove the EXIF data losslessly.

More Exposure tags