It was one of the reason's I paid for a copy of NeatImage, the other being the tiff output. Unfortunately some other piece of software I use also strips the EXIF when saving to tiff, which is normally the first thing I do. Oh well.
Back on topic. I can see how the EXIF data might be useful in controlled situations. Back in the early days I sort of took notes too, because that is what you were supposed to do. But I never found it that useful when you were out in the 'wild' what was best last week in the Mendips isn't necessarily true this week on the Norfolk Broads. That's why you'd bracket the exposures, back home you may find that the 'over exposed' shot was better than the others, perhaps it was the 'under exposed' one, or the 'correct' one, but damned if a day or two later I could ever remember what the exact circumstance might have been that made one better than the others. You can see the same thing happening in Clive's Appleby photos, some are at 1/800 some at 1/500, whether its done manually or automatically by the camera, there is a degree of bracketing occurring on shutter speed. Which I think is the most important thing of note, but nothing in the EXIF for an individual photo tells you that.
I have photographic books and magazines on my selves, underneath each photo is stuff like 1/100 f16, and I've always felt so what? What if it had been taken at 1/200 f16, perhaps that would have made a better image, or perhaps if he was better at panning he'd have been able to use 1/250 instead of 1/500.
A lot has been made in the thread about novices being able to work out how to do things by examining someone's EXIF data. Which presupposes that the novice knows how to read the EXIF and what it is telling them. I'm pretty sure that if one of my non-photographic savvy coleagues asked me how do you get blurry flowing water and I replied 'Look at the EXIF in this photo.' I'd get a pretty sharp response.
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