iPhone EXIF Field Glossary

The moment the photo was captured, expressed in the camera's local time zone. This is the single most-cited field across legal evidence, claim documentation, and inspection workflows. iPhone uses the system clock at capture — if the iPhone clock is wrong, this field will be wrong, but clock tampering is exceptionally rare given iPhone's automatic network-time sync.

When the EXIF was last written. For an iPhone capture this is identical to DateTimeOriginal. The fields diverge when a photo is scanned, re-saved by an editor, or otherwise processed — DateTimeDigitized reflects the most recent write, DateTimeOriginal reflects the original capture.

The capture latitude. iPhone stores it as degrees-minutes-seconds in EXIF; most export tools (including Photo Metadata Exporter) convert to decimal degrees. Positive values are North; negative are South.

The capture longitude. Positive values are East of the prime meridian; negative are West. The Americas are all negative longitudes.

Capture altitude in meters above (or below) sea level. Underrated for multi-story documentation — distinguishes basement / 1st / 2nd / 3rd floor / attic in residential and commercial workflows. Noisy by nature; do not rely on sub-meter precision.

The compass direction the camera was pointing at capture, 0 = North. Useful in accident reconstruction, real-estate photography, and field research for confirming photo orientation.

The camera manufacturer. For iPhone photos this is always "Apple".

The specific device model. Used to authenticate the source iPhone class. Apple removed the device serial number from public EXIF years ago for privacy; the Model field identifies the model line but not the specific unit.

iOS version that wrote the EXIF. Occasionally useful in forensic timeline correlation. A non-iOS Software value (e.g., "Adobe Photoshop") indicates a photo was processed in a third-party tool after capture.

The specific physical lens used at capture. On multi-camera iPhones, distinguishes 0.5× (ultra-wide), 1× (main), 2× / 3× / 5× (telephoto), and Front camera. Useful for verifying which lens captured a shot and ruling out post-hoc edits.

Actual focal length in millimeters. Pairs with FocalLengthIn35mmFilm (the 35mm-equivalent) for traditional photography reference.

Aperture in f-stop notation. Most iPhones have fixed apertures per lens (the main lens of an iPhone 15 Pro is f/1.78). Some Pro models have variable-aperture main lenses where this value can vary.

Shutter exposure time in seconds. Auto-mode iPhone Camera adjusts this based on light; faster shutters (1/1000s) for bright scenes, slower (1/30s or longer) for low light.

Sensor sensitivity. iPhone Camera Auto adjusts ISO based on light: 25-100 in bright sun, up to 6400+ in low light. High ISO indicates a low-light capture.

Whether and how flash fired. Most daylight iPhone photos report no flash.

White balance mode. iPhone Camera defaults to Auto.

Any +/- EV adjustment the user dialed in. Mostly zero for default iPhone Camera use.

Image width in pixels. An iPhone 15 Pro main camera typically produces 4032 × 3024 (12MP) or 8064 × 6048 (48MP ProRAW).

Image height in pixels. Standard portrait orientation has Length > Width.

How the camera was held at capture. iPhone Photos and other viewers respect this automatically. Raw integer values follow the EXIF standard mapping.

Color space. iPhone outputs sRGB by default; modern iPhones with Display P3 may report Uncalibrated. Matters for print-publishing and color-critical workflows.

DPI metadata. Mostly historical artifact from the print-publishing era; modern documentation workflows ignore these values.

Byte size of the file on disk. Useful as a sanity check — if a photo's file size is much smaller than expected for an iPhone capture (typically 2-12 MB), it may be a compressed re-save or a screenshot rather than an original.