I’m calling upon the site administrators to reject any photo without the exif info or exif with partial information. If the goal of the site to go international then this is a must. Most of the respectful sites in the world do not except uploads of photos without the exif. The following is an extract from the site rules, paragraph No. 1. “Another goal of this site is to raise the level of photography in Israel, all this by writing and learning of comments and criticism, and by knowledge that every user cab share with others.” Well, if a photographer just upload a picture without the exif and without any technical information or description, to my understanding he/she is breaking rule number 1 because he/she does not share information and therefore the photo should be disqualified. We are investing time on the field, we are spending time working with all kind of post production computer programs to show off our work. So why not to spend few more minutes to document our work? Why to hide information? I may be on the other extreme and spend long time to document my work because I’m proud to explain what I did and why I did so. See example of one of my descriptions: http://www.photolightworld.com/show_photo/author168/368.html That may be overkill but this is me. I will settle for less from the rest of us. Of course, there are exceptions for not having the exif such as scanned pictures or photos from cellular phones (oh’ don’t laugh; I’ve seen beautiful pictures taken with a phone). Personally, I would love to write comment on every picture that I like, but I refuse to do so if there is no exif. It is a two way street – I’m investing time and energy to write and expecting that the author will give me in return information so I can learn as well.

Although we prefer images with Exif, this is not a must. Like you wrote yourself, there are still people out there that use film or used to and now they have a large amount of quality photos that thay will not be able to upload here if we were to act according to your suggestion. Also, add the files that lost this data. In these cases it's better no data instead of wrong data. If this site was strictly for the technical side then yes, Exif would have been mandatory. But the Exif, as much as I'm for it, can only help to some level. Take the digital art category for example. What does the Exif has to do with it? I just looked at your example. You wrote a full description about how you created the panorama, how far were you from the gate, the approximate angles between the photos, and the program you used to stitch the files. Where is your Exif? You wrote about the post production but nothing about the actual taking picture process (except mentioning 50mm focal length). To your standarts, this picture should be removed. This is exactly why we encourage people to keep the Exif data but we'll never force them.

[b]Lior, [/b] I agree with you that there are exceptions. There are old photos, special effects (including panoramas) etc. where there is no exif. I just wanted to bring up this issue because there are some excellent picture here without any data even as far as what camera and lens where used. The bottom line really is the end result and if we like it or not and to comment the best way we can and if there is enough data we can appreciate the author’s work and learn from each other.

Ansel Adams is known - among other things - by his black-and-white photographs of the American West and primarily Yosemite National Park. A group of people decided to recreate these photos. They got the exact coordinates, they consulted astronomers to find the exact time when all conditions were the same. And did they succeed? No. They couldn't get near the original. Technicalities will help you up to some level. When you learn photography in an institute you'll learn about the photographers and their photos but you [b]won't[/b] learn about how each photo was taken. A good photo is made only by the photographer and not by a piece of paper with technical instruction. If for some reason a user decide not to share his Exif information it's his choice and we won't shun him.