Dalifer is a small but powerful utility targeted at the users of Minolta digital cameras. It has many useful features packed into one program. We think about a Dalifer as of a Swiss knife for Minolta digital photographers and we plan to add new features based on your needs and feedback in the future.

The most interesting features of Dalifer are:

displays the thumbnails of .mrw files in Windows' Explorer or even in File->Open dialogs of many applications

shows you where the camera was focused on

views all the EXIF information including the very interesting information stored in MakerNote
(for example AntiShake, exact ISO value, NoiseReduction, Sharpness, Contrast)

adds chosen EXIF or MakerNote tags into the Explorer's Details view

two different types of lossless rotation of pictures, including rotation of A2 MRW pictures

can extract the complete EXIF and MakerNote data and re-insert it back into the JPEG file later after editing

can extract the embedded ICC profile and XMP data

extends the Windows ability to display the thumbnails of graphic files for new file types
(*.jpf, *.pcx, *.ras, *.tga and *.vda)

disables some potentially dangerous Windows features

Requirements

The Dalifer software needs at least Windows 95 so it can be installed on any current Windows computer. However Dalifer enhances and interacts with some functions of Windows interface which are not present in older operating systems. Therefore some features mentioned in this user guide will not be available if your operating system is older than Windows XP.

There are no unusual requirements for disk space, memory or processor speed. If your computer is able to run Windows then it will be able to run Dalifer as well.

Demo version

There is a Demo version of Dalifer available to download from http://www.dalibor.cz/minolta/dalifer.htm

The Demo version is not meant for normal usage. It is provided so anyone can download and test Dalifer to decide if it is worth buying the full version. You should test the Demo version before you purchase the full version to verify that Dalifer meets your expectations and that it does work smoothly on your computer.

Of course, not all the functions of the full version are presented in the Demo version. The Demo version is limited in these ways:

random thumbnails will be displayed as black rectangles with the red text Demo

you can not reinsert the EXIF information back into JPEG file

you will not be able to see the most interesting tags of MakerNote (their contents are replaced by text DEMO)

you will not be able to extract the ICC profile nor the XMP packet

the Demo version will expire some time after installation

If you are satisfied with Dalifer features and its performance on your computer then you are welcome to purchase the full version and support the future development in this way. The full version is available for purchase for 20 USD in the internet shop SWREG.org. You can find the link leading to this internet shop in the Dalifer Configuration window. Clicking on the blue text www.swreg.org there will take you directly to my virtual store.

Software License

This software Dalifer is copyrighted by Dalibor Jelinek and Lubor Nosek. The reverse engineering, modification and distribution are forbidden without prior written permission.

This software is provided "as-is" and without warranty of any kind, express, implied or otherwise, including without limitation, any warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. In no event shall Dalibor Jelinek or Lubor Nosek be liable for any special, incidental, indirect or consequential damages of any kind, or any damages whatsoever resulting from loss of use, data or profits, whether or not advised of the possibility of damage, and on any theory of liability, arising out of or in connection with the use or the performance of this software.

The license to use this software is transferable to third party only with the permission of Dalibor Jelinek.

You are allowed to use this software on two (or more) computers only if the software will be used by the same person and it will not be used at the same time on more than one of the computers.

Installation

You have received a ZIP file containing this user guide and an EXE file which is the Dalifer installer (called Dalifer Setup 1.0.exe.) If you are installing Dalifer for the first time just double click this file and the Dalifer Setup Wizard should appear. If you are upgrading from an older version of Dalifer then please read the next section about Upgrade first.

After clicking on the Next button you can choose the folder where you would like to install Dalifer. It is recommended to install it in the default folder C:\Program Files\Dalifer

You can select the name of the folder created in the Start menu in the next window. Again the default setting is recommended.

There are three optional selections in the next window. You can let the setup program create an icon of Dalifer Configuration on the desktop and in the quick start taskbar. If you do not want to have those icons created then you can start the Dalifer Configuration anytime later from the Start menu. The last checkbox will run the Dalifer Configuration after the installation will be finished.

Finally, click the Install button in the next window.

The installation of Dalifer will proceed.

The Dalifer Configuration window will be displayed at the end of the installation (unless you have disabled this during the installation). You can review and change the Dalifer settings or you can safely close this dialog as you can start it any time later.

Upgrade

If you are upgrading Dalifer with the new version then it is recommended to first uninstall the old version before you install the new one. You can uninstall the old version using Add/Remove Programs in the Control panels or using the icon Uninstall in the Dalifer folder in the Start menu.

The Dalifer settings are kept in the Dalifer.ini file stored in the folder where you have installed the old version, (usually C:\Program Files\Dalifer) and the de-installation process will not delete this file. So if you install the new version of Dalifer in the same folder as where the old version was then the new version will continue to use your old settings.

If you are upgrading from a previous version of Dalifer then it is possible that you will be asked to restart your computer at the end of the installation process. As some parts of Dalifer are integrated with Windows Explorer we cannot avoid this restart.

The version of Dalifer library which is in use by Windows is displayed in the Dalifer Configuration window. It is possible the old version number will still be displayed in the Configuration window. After you restart the computer Windows will load the new version of Dalifer library and then the new version number will be displayed in Configuration window.

Support and upgrades

The development of Dalifer is an ongoing project. We have many ideas for future improvements and you are very welcome to send us your comments and suggestions. We promise that we will seriously evaluate your comments and proposals and we will try to implement them in the future versions. The best way for contacting us is using the web based support forum on http://www.dalibor.cz/support

If you have a question about installing and using Dalifer or if you need an explanation of some functions then you should visit the forum and try to search for an answer there. If your question is not answered then you should post your question in the forum and wait until I or some of the fellow users will answer it. If no one answers your question in reasonable amount of time then you can email me at dalifer@dalibor.cz

There is a Wish List section on this forum as well where you can describe the features you would like to have in the future version of Dalifer.

The new versions of Dalifer will be distributed using this forum as well. There is a download area in the forum where the latest versions of Dalifer are published. Access to this page is limited for the owners of the full version of Dalifer. If you want to get an access to the latest version then please do this:

Visit the support forum at www.dalibor.cz/support

In the upper part of the page click on Register

Choose the login name and password for you

You have to enter a valid e-mail address

You can enter additional information about yourself as well if you wish

Finish the registration as a new user in the support forum

Lastly, please email your real name and the chosen login name for the forum to the address dalifer@dalibor.cz

When I receive your mail I will verify that you are an owner of the full version of Dalifer (not the Demo version) and then I will grant you an access to the download page. You can then visit the support forum any time later, log-in using your login name and password and download the latest version of Dalifer.

Thumbnails

There is a function to display the thumbnails of graphic files in Windows Explorer. If you want to view the thumbnails of your images in Windows just browse to the folder where you store your pictures and choose View‑>Thumbnails (or View‑>Filmstrip) from the menu. Dalifer extends this built-in function by adding support for new file types. Windows will be able to display the thumbnails of MRW files and of some additional graphic formats after you install Dalifer. Dalifer is able to display the thumbnails for the following file types: .jpg, .jpe, .jpeg, .mrw, .tif, .tiff, .bmp, .dib, .emf, .gif, .jfif, .png, .wmf, .jpf, .pcx, .ras, .rle, .tga and .vga. You can customize the thumbnails in Dalifer Configuration (see this section further in the user guide).

Focus Area

As you can see in the picture above, Dalifer does replace the function for generating the thumbnails for JPEG and TIFF files by its own code so it can display additional information in the thumbnails. If Dalifer is able to extract the necessary information from the picture then it will display the area where the camera was focused on at the time of taking the picture. Depending on the camera settings Dalifer will display:

Small red rectangle
This means that the camera was set to normal Wide Focus mode. The position of the rectangle is the same as it was displayed in the camera’s viewfinder

Red rectangle around the whole picture
The camera was not able to determine the focus and it was indicating it by a red circle in the viewfinder. The picture is probably out of focus.

Red cross
The camera was set to Flex Focus Point

Red letters MF
The camera was in Manual Focus Mode

Nothing
Dalifer was not able to determine the Focus Point. The reason probably is that the EXIF data is missing in the picture or it is damaged.

Dalifer uses two different ways to determine the focus area. If the picture does contain the valid Minolta MakerNote information then it is used. If there is no Minolta MakerNote or the focus area cannot be determined from it then Dalifer searches for EXIF tag called SubjectArea. However this tag is not as precise as the information gathered from MakerNote.

You should be aware that the vast majority of picture editing/viewing applications will destroy the Minolta MakerNote when they resave the picture files. Editing pictures in Photoshop, rotating it in ACDSee or using functions of Windows Picture and Fax viewer will destroy the MakerNote and some of the EXIF information so you should avoid those programs or work with a copy of the image and always keep the original picture intact as a backup (see section Vulnerability of MakerNote).

The camera models containing the focus area information in MakerNote are:
DiMAGE 7u, 7i, 7Hi, A1, A2
The camera models recording the focus area information in SubjectArea tag are:

DiMAGE S414, F100, F200, F300, Xi, Xt, Xg, X20, X21, Z1, Z2

The camera models which do not record this information at all are:
DiMAGE 5, 7, S304, S404, X

Thumbnails in applications’ dialogs

The thumbnails of the pictures are not limited to Windows Explorer only. If the application uses the standard Windows functions for File->Open and File->Save dialogs then the thumbnails generated by Dalifer will be available in those dialogs as well. There are many such applications, Photoshop is for example one of them.

Thumbnails Size

You can use Dalifer to adjust the size of the thumbnails displayed by Windows. The size slider is located in Configuration->Advanced. You can choose any size you like starting from the tiny 32 pixels wide thumbnails

going up to the huge 256 pixels wide thumbnails.

Property page

Dalifer is able to display the EXIF information contained in digital pictures. However Dalifer is not just another boring EXIF reader - there are some features which make it unique for owners of Minolta cameras. The most important thing is that it is the only EXIF reader capable of decoding and displaying the contents of MakerNote tag. Another advantage is that Dalifer can read and decode the EXIF data from any file format. Of course it knows the most popular JPEG and TIFF formats but the user can specify any file extension in Configuration and Dalifer will search the file and display EXIF information if it finds it in the file. This means that Dalifer is able to decode EXIF information from the file formats which will be invented in the future.

There are some readers on the web available for download which can decode MakerNote tag but they are not as good as Dalifer. One is freeware ExifReader written by Ryuuji Yoshimoto, this software is not developed anymore and its MakerNote decoding is not complete, also it cannot decode information from pictures taken with A1 and A2. The second one is called Exifer written by Friedemann Schmidt which is much better. Still the information decoded by Exifer is not complete and it cannot work with A2 pictures. I was providing Friedemann with the information how do decode the Minolta MakerNote but it seems that he has lost an interest in continuing the development of this nice free software. Actually this was the main reason for creating Dalifer (and you can guess where the name Dalifer came from).

Displaying the EXIF data and MakerNote

You can display the EXIF data and MakerNote by right clicking the file and choosing Properties. There will be a new tab in the properties header called Dalifer. In this panel are displayed all the EXIF tags, MakerNote contents and other interesting information about your picture. You can select multiple files as well and select Properties for all of them. In this case one Dalifer panel will be displayed for every file selected.

This list of tags is divided into the following sections called Tag families. The tags are sorted alphabetically for easier orientation in individual sections. You can disable some uninteresting families in Configuration.

TIFF tags (main image)

TIFF tags (embedded thumbnail image)

EXIF tags (according to standard version 2.21)

TIFF/EP tags (this is predecessor of EXIF used by old cameras)

PIM tags (Epson’s Print Image Matching)

Minolta tags (this is the MakerNote tag)

Minolta Camera Settings (those are the most interesting information stored in CameraSettings tag)

JPEG tags (describing the format of JPEG file)

MRW tags (describing additional information contained in .mrw file format)

There are some tags whose meaning are not known or constant in all the pictures I have seen. Those tag names are preceded by tilde ~ so they are at the end of the list. Also there are some known tags which contain values of unknown meaning. In this case, the values of the tag is Undefined. You can disable displaying of unknown and undefined tags in the Dalifer Configuration.

What is MakerNote

MakerNote is one of the tags in EXIF data. This tag content is not set by any standard and its content is freely defined by the camera maker. Minolta has wisely chosen to write a lot of very useful information into this tag. But surprisingly they have never released any software which is able to decode and display its contents to users (and they have not published its description either). I started to decode the MakerNote information in August 2002 and it took several weeks of hard work to decipher its substantial part containing the most interesting information. However there are still some areas which are still unknown and they are to be deciphered in the future.

Of course some of the information is duplicated in publicly known EXIF format. But the information in EXIF is often rounded to “convenient” numbers so they are inaccurate or even completely false.

Here are just a few samples of MakerNote contents:

the exact ISO value (for example ISO 133)

the exact (and real) focal length

the color mode was vivid or normal

AntiShake was on/off and it was/wasn’t really used

the exact values of contrast and saturation

the focus mode and focus distance

the quality of the JPEG compression used

Vulnerability of MakerNote

The MakerNote is very valuable source of information about the settings you have used when you were shooting the particular image. At the same time MakerNote is the most endangered information contained in the image. Almost any image manipulating software you might use to edit or view your images is capable of doing some apparently harmless operation with the image. This includes resizing, commenting or even lossless rotating. But to do those operations the image has to be resaved and there lies the big danger. Because the content of the MakerNote is not documented the vast majority of image processing application does not know how to handle it and they either leave it out completely or damage it. There is so little applications which can treat the MakerNote in a same way that you can safely assume that the one you are using is the bad one. At the of writing this manual, I do not know any application which is completely MakerNote-safe (Photoshop, ACDSee and even DiVU does not preserve the complete MakerNote).

This fact was another major reason for creating Dalifer. I have felt that I need some application which would allow me to backup the complete EXIF/MakerNote information into a small file and then insert it back when I finish editing the image. As always, I strongly recommend archiving your pictures onto CD or DVD immediately after downloading them to your computer. You never know when you might want to know how your camera was set up when you were shooting some picture.

There is an application Picture and Fax Viewer built in Windows XP. This application adds the command for rotating the image CW and CCW in the menu which appears when you right click the picture file. This application is a complete disaster in terms of preserving EXIF and MakerNote information as it destroys not only the MakerNote but EXIF as well. Therefore after you install Dalifer this menu will be disabled by default to avoid any possible problems.

Details View

Dalifer offers you the possibility to view the most interesting information from EXIF/MakerNote in a single well-arranged window. Just browse into the folder where you store your pictures and switch to Details view by choosing View->Details from the menu. Then click View->Choose Details... and select the tags you want to be displayed. The names in the list of the available tags provided by Dalifer are in the format TagFamily-TagName” The most interesting are those beginning with EXIF-, Minolta- and Minolta CS-.

When you have selected the additional information to be displayed you can work with the columns in the same manner as you are used to. You can resize them by dragging the column separator size them to exactly fit its contents by double-clicking the column separator and you can sort the files in the folder by the value of the tag by clicking on the columns header.

Of course determining and displaying this additional information in the folder takes some additional time. Therefore if you are not going to use this Details view then it is better to disable this feature in Dalifer Configuration.

Context menu

Dalifer has some additional functions which are accessible by the context menu. Just select any picture file supported by Dalifer and right click it. There will be a new item, Dalifer, in the menu. The functions in this menu are described below. When you want to run the function on more pictures (rotate them clockwise for example) you don’t have to rotate them one by one. Just select more of them and then the function will be applied to all the pictures selected.

Rotate 90° (tag only)

Those two commands allow you to rotate the picture in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction. There are many ways to rotate the picture. The method used by this command is the cleanest and easiest one. There is a tag inside EXIF which describes the orientation of the camera when the picture was taken. Some cameras are even equipped with orientation sensors (F200 for example) and they can detect if the camera was held in portrait or landscape orientation. This method of rotation simply does search for the EXIF Orientation tag and modifies it accordingly.

The beauty of this method is that is modifies only one single byte inside the picture and thus there is no risk of doing any unwanted modification. Also, it allows you to rotate the MRW files.

However, there are some drawbacks. The most important thing is that the tag is not respected by all the image viewing and editing applications, which is quite sad as this is really the preferred way of rotating images. You will have to test if your favorite application does support this type of rotation before you regularly use it. If it does not support it then please contact the vendor of your application and ask him to fix this issue. It is expected that new versions of application will support Orientation tag.

Known applications supporting Orientation tag are:
Minolta DiMAGE Viewer (latest versions), Adobe Photoshop CS, Adobe Photoshop Album

Known applications not supporting Orientation tag:

ACDSee, IrfanView, XnView, Adobe Photoshop 7 and older, Adobe Photoshop Elements 1 and 2, JASC Paint Shop Pro, JASC Paint Shop Photo Album

The next drawback is that this rotation will not be available for pictures which do not contain this Orientation tag in EXIF. If the Orientation tag is not present we obviously cannot modify it. We could add this tag into EXIF and then save the file. But using this way it would modify the complete file which is not preferred as this function is really meant to minimize the modification of the file. Therefore it is possible to rotate MRW picture from DiMAGE A2, but not from older cameras as they do not store the Orientation tag.

Rotate 90° (image)

This is a second set of commands rotating the picture in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction. Rotation is done using lossless JPEG rotation in this case. There are many applications supporting lossless JPEG rotation but Dalifer is unique because it does make sure that during the rotation all the EXIF/MakerNote information is preserved in the file.

Unlike the previously mentioned kind of rotation this one is much more “invasive” as the complete file is modified. Therefore it is recommended to use the other type of rotation if possible.

These rotation commands can be used on JPEG files only.

Export EXIF to text file

Using this function you can save all the tags contained in the file into a text file for easier access or further processing. The information saved is the same as the one displayed in Dalifer Properties page. You can control which tag families you want to export in Configuration. The text file will be named PictureName.txt and it will be saved into the same folder. In case that you want to save it under different name or in different folder then you can use the function Export EXIF to text file...

When you have multiple files selected and use Export EXIF to text file… function then the dialog will appear asking you to select the folder. This function will then extract and save the EXIF information from all the files into chosen folder using the default names in form PictureName.txt

Backup EXIF

This function will extract the complete EXIF information (including MakerNote) and save it into a small file in the current folder along with the picture file. The files created will be named PictureName.exif. For example: If you extract EXIF from a picture named PICT1304.JPG then the extracted EXIF will be saved into a file named PICT1304.JPG.exif

As I have mentioned before the information stored in EXIF and especially MakerNote is very vulnerable to all editing applications. So you should either backup the original pictures immediately after downloading them or at least extract the EXIF information before you are going to rotate or edit them.

The .exif file saved by Dalifer can be of course processed by Dalifer as it is its native format. So you can still view all the tags by right clicking it and choosing Properties and the thumbnail of this file will be displayed as well. The .exif file format is proprietary so you will not be able to view it straight using other EXIF viewers. But if you need to do this you can always use the function Insert EXIF (described below) and reinsert the EXIF into any JPEG file. Then you can use any EXIF viewer to view the information.

Backup EXIF to...

This is an extension to previously described function. It has two different modes of operation:

When you select single file it will display common Save As dialog and you can choose the name and the destination folder of the saved .exif file.

When you have multiple files selected then the dialog will appear asking you to select the folder. This function will then extract and save the EXIF information from all the files into chosen folder using the default names in form PictureName.exif

Insert EXIF

This is opposite function to EXIF Backup. It allows you to insert the EXIF/MakerNote information which you have backed up before back into any JPEG file. When you choose this function Dalifer will ask you to choose the .exif file you want to insert in selected file. There will be created a backup copy of the original file just for the case something goes wrong. The backup file will be created in the same folder and it will be named PictureName.bak You can disable the creation of backup copies in Configuration.

This feature is very handy if you want to have the complete EXIF/MakerNote information in edited picture. Usually when you edit the picture using Adobe Photoshop or another image editing software then some of the information in EXIF and complete MakerNote is lost. But you still might want to publish your picture on the internet or send it by email with the complete information. So the only way is to backup the EXIF information, edit the picture, save it and insert the complete information back into the saved file.

Note that it is possible to backup the EXIF from MRW or TIFF file and insert it back to created JPEG file. So you might process your MRW file using Adobe CameraRAW or MRWFormat and then save it to JPEG and re-insert the original and complete EXIF and MakerNote information.

If there was any EXIF information in the picture file then it will be replaced by the re-inserted EXIF. But the old EXIF information is not removed from the file. It is just hidden so in case of urgent need it could be restored manually by us.

Extract ICC profile

Using this function you can extract the ICC profile embedded in the picture and save it into the file so you can use this profile in any application or examine it using profile viewing tools. As far as I know this is very unique feature as I do not know any other software allowing this. You can extract the ICC profile from TIFF or JPEG files (MRW files do not contain embedded profiles). The profile will be named PictureName.icc and stored in the same folder.

Please note that it is not clear if the embedded ICC profiles are or are not protected by copyright laws. In my opinion they are not protected as they are not software but just a bunch of numbers describing the color space. But there are some people claiming that the creator of ICC profile has all the rights as it would be a normal piece of software.

Extract XMP packet

There is a new standard created by Adobe which defines a way of embedding metadata in XML format into different file types. This metadata is stored in so called XMP packets (eXtensible Metadata Platform). Only the latest versions of Adobe applications store information using XMP, but this standard is open so other vendors might adopt and use it in the future.

The extracted XMP packet will be named PictureName.xmp and stored in the same folder. You can either view it using any text editor or you can import the data for further processing (in a database system or Excel) using standard XML processing methods.

Adobe CameraRAW users might be very interested in the content of XMP packet as it contains the information about the CameraRAW settings used when processing MRW (or other raw) format. A few EXIF tags are saved there as well.

Configuration

Dalifer Configuration allows you to fine tune the behaviour of Dalifer on your computer. The default settings should be acceptable for most users but you should at least view it as you might want to set up some settings in different way. The Configuration is started using an icon placed on the desktop, in the quick launch task bar or from the Start menu. When you start Dalifer Configuration the following dialog appears.

In the upper part you can see the version and the release data of Dalifer which is currently used. Then there are two blue links to product web site and to the support forum. You can directly click on those links and your internet browser will open. In case you are evaluating Dalifer demo version then the red text DEMO will be displayed there and one of the links will lead you into the shop on SWREG where you can purchase the full unlimited version.

The Disable Dalifer check box can be used to disable all Dalifer’s functions at once. The Dalifer DLL will be unregistered from Windows immediately. You can start Dalifer by clearing this checkbox later. There should be no reason to use it unless you experience some problems with Explorer crashes.

In the middle part you can disable/enable all the functions one by one. Generally speaking you should disable all the functions you are not using as it will speed up Windows Explorer and lower the usage of system resources.

Thumbnail

This check box controls whether the Dalifer will provide Windows with thumbnail images for the supported file types. You can fine tune this function in Advanced section described later.

Override windows thumbnails

Some Windows versions contain GDI+ libraries which display the thumbnails support for some file types (esp. JPEG and TIFF). If you want to have the thumbnails generated by Dalifer instead of Windows (to see the focus area) then you have to keep this box checked to override the GDI+ library.

Property page

This check box enables the additional Dalifer property page with EXIF/MakerNote tags. This page is displayed when you select a file, right click it and select Properties from the pop-up menu.

Context menu

This check box enables the Dalifer menu displayed when you right click a picture file. This menu contains functions as Rotation, Backup EXIF, Export, Extract, ...

Columns for Details View

This check box enables adding additional columns filled with EXIF and MakerNote info into Explorer's Detail View.

Display focus area in thumbnails

Using this check box you can disable drawing of the red rectangles showing the focus area in the thumbnails.

Advanced Configuration

This page contains the controls allowing you to fine tune the Dalifer’s behaviour.

File associations

Those four checkboxes specify all file extension you want to use with Dalifer. You can add any additional extension you want in the edit box below the last check box (for example: psd, bak, jpf). Multiple extensions must be separated by a comma character.

Backup

Anytime Dalifer modifies the JPEG file (by rotation or EXIF insertion) it can create a backup of the file changed. The backup file will be created in the same folder and named PictureName.bak. We do recommend creating the backup files unless you backup your pictures in different way.

You can fine tune Dalifer’s behaviour when an older backup of the file is spotted during backup-creating operation. You can select from three different choices. Dalifer can Ask you what to do, Always overwrite existing backup files or Never overwrite existing backup files. The last choice is the best because it will create and preserve the backup of the original file as it came from the camera.

Version checking

If you keep this checkbox enabled, Dalifer will connect to my website and check to see if there is an updated version available at every start of Configuration. No personal information about you is transferred to me during the version check. You can trigger the version check by clicking on the button manually if you want. You have to be connected to the internet for this function to work.

Display tag families

Here you can disable the processing of parts of metadata that you are not interested in. The default setting should be acceptable for the most users. Of course the most interesting information is in Minolta Camera Settings and in EXIF. So you might want to keep only those two families enabled to enhance the readability of the Properties panel. This setting applies to the information saved to the text file using Export EXIF to text file as well.

Display unknown tags will display the tags whose meaning is still not known. There are relatively few such tags and I hope that I will be able to decipher them some day in the future.
Some tags contain just pointers to the data embedded at some place in the file. You normally cannot benefit very much from this information so you will probably want to keep Display tags containing offsets unchecked.

Thumbnails – Size

Dalifer gives you the possibility to change the size of the thumbnails displayed by Windows in range from 32 to 256 pixels. The Windows default is 96 pixels.

Thumbnails – White balance .mrw thumbnails for D5 and D7

Those older models of Minolta DiMAGE were not embedding the white balanced thumbnails into MRW files. Normally those thumbnails do look to green. This doesn’t apply to D7 upgraded to version 2 firmware as this bug was fixed in this firmware. When this checkbox is selected then Dalifer will detect those older MRW files and it will do the white balancing on them. Please do not expect perfect results. The thumbnail was partially processed in the camera and it is not possible to make it perfect; this is just a quick fix. To have perfectly looking thumbnails we would have to process the whole RAW file and it would be very time consuming.

Disable Picture and Fax Viewer

Windows XP have a built-in picture viewer. This picture viewer does append the commands Rotate Clockwise and Rotate Counter Clockwise in the context menu for JPEG files when they are viewed as thumbnails. Those two commands are absolute disaster for EXIF and MakerNote as they ruin them completely. You should never attempt to use them. To avoid any possible mistakes Dalifer disables those rotations by default and you should keep this checkbox enabled.

MakerNote

Here are some notes regarding some MakerNote tags which you might find interesting.

Aperture & ShutterSpeed

I do not use the standard values here. I am using the exact values which are based on power of 2. I do believe that even in classic photography the value of 1/500 sec is just rounded to the decimal system and the real shutter time is 1/512 sec.

Also some values written in EXIF part are rounded too much so it is possible to see a ShutterSpeed of 30 sec in EXIF and the exact value of 20.7 sec in MakerNote.

ISOSetting

Some values displayed here might look incorrect as you might find strange values such as ISO 133 in this tag. The camera has the ability to use values other than 100, 200, 400 and 800. This is not surprising for the native ISO of DiMAGE CCD chip is about ISO 130. The other ISO values are just multiplication products of the values read from the CCD by some coefficient.

Another interesting case might be ISO 1037 (set to 800). Even when you set the ISO to a fixed value the camera can alter it. But this happens only in A and S mode.

Focal lengths

The values displayed here are a bit different from the values stored in EXIF. The reason is that Minolta “adjusts” the focal length values written to EXIF. The Minolta engineers have decided to multiply the focal lengths lower than 15 mm by 0.97 and the focal lengths higher than 30 mm are multiplied by 1.02. This way when you divide the highest focal length value reported in EXIF by the smallest one you might think that your camera is 7x zoom. But in reality the real zoom of this camera is just 6.5x. The values displayed by Dalifer in CameraSettings section are not cheated and they do conform to reality.

Digital zoom

One of four values will be displayed here: off, digital zoom, elec. magnification or unknown value 3. The elec. magnification means that you took the shot with the image enlarged in the EVF. At this time I do not know the meaning of the unknown value 3. There is nothing special about pictures with this value and I tend to believe that this is just a bug in the firmware.

Bracketing

If the picture was taken in Bracketing mode (as reported by DriveMode tag) then please observe the value of the tag DECPosition to find out if you were bracketing exposure, contrast or saturation. The tag BracketStep will tell you what the step for exposure bracketing was.

AntiShake & AntiShakeData

The AntiShake tag will tell you whether the AntiShake feature of DiMAGE A1 or A2 was enabled when you took the photo. But in some cases the AntiShake feature might be enabled but the camera will not use it. So when in doubt you should check the tag AntiShakeData which will tell you if the AntiShake feature was really used.

FlashFired & InternalFlash

By observing the value of those two tags you can find out if the scene was flashed using the built-in flash or externally connected unit such as the 5600HS. In the case of external flash usage, the data will be FlashFired = yes and InternalFlash = no.

APEX values

There are some values with appendix EV displayed. Those are the exposure values converted to APEX units (Additive System of Photographic Exposure). APEX is a convenient system for calculating the correct exposure. The basic rule for calculating the exposure in every camera is Ev = Av + Tv = Bv + Sv. This means that when the shot is exposed properly then Av+Tv is equal to Bv+Sv.
Ev      – exposure value (the total “brightness” of the scene)
Av      – aperture value, calculated from the selected aperture; Av = 2 * log₂(F_number)
Tv      – time value, calculated shutter speed; Tv = - log₂(shutter speed)
Bv      – brightness value, measured by exposimeter; Bv = log₂(brightness in foot lambert)
Sv      – speed value, calculated from film sensitivity; Sv = log₂(0.32*ISO)

Supported file formats

Dalifer understands a variety of file formats. It is definitely not limited to Minolta digital cameras.

Thumbnails

Dalifer is able to display the thumbnails for the following file types:

.jpg, .jpe, .jpeg, .mrw, .tif, .tiff, .bmp, .dib, .emf, .gif, .jfif, .png, .wmf, .jpf, .pcx, .ras, .rle, .tga, .vga and .exif

The exact focus area can be displayed for the pictures taken by:

DiMAGE 7u, 7i, 7Hi, A1, A2, S414

The approximate focus area can be displayed for the pictures taken by:

DiMAGE F100, F200, F300, Xi, Xt, Xg, X20, X21, Z1, Z2

and additionally for any camera model from any vendor which stores the EXIF tag SubjectArea or TIFF/EP tag SubjectLocation

Metadata

Dalifer directly supports reading the metadata from JPEG, TIFF and MRW files. Metadata includes TIFF tags, EXIF tags, TIFF/EP tags and the information contained in JPEG and MRW file formats.

Unlike many other EXIF viewers it is not limited only to those file formats. You can add any file extension in the Configuration and Dalifer will search the whole file for the embedded EXIF information and for the thumbnail. This process of course takes a little bit longer compared to directly supported formats. For example the metadata from .psd, .eps or JPEG2000 files can be displayed in this way.

MakerNote

Dalifer can decode the MakerNote tag from pictures taken by the following Minolta (and KonicaMinolta) cameras:

DiMAGE 5, 7, 7u, 7i, 7Hi, A1, A2, S304, S404, S414, F100, F200, F300, X, Xi, Xt, Xg, X20, X21, Z1, Z2

The pictures from following cameras contain the very interesting CameraSettings tag:

DiMAGE 5, 7, 7u, 7i, 7Hi, A1, A2, S304, S404, S414

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Why is my question not listed here?

You haven’t asked it yet. The best way to ask questions about Dalifer is to visit the support forum on the internet address http://www.dalibor.cz/support First please browse or search the forum as your question might be answered already. If you do not find any answers then please post it in the appropriate section of the support forum. It is better to register as a new user in the forum (clicking Register in the upper part of the page) as you will be notified by email when you get an answer. If no one helps you in reasonable amount of time then feel free to email me at dalifer@dalibor.cz.

2. How do I get updated version of Dalifer?

The updated versions of Dalifer will be distributed using the support forum http://www.dalibor.cz/support There is a page with downloads from where you will be able to download the latest version. However this page is not accessible to everyone and you must be given access to it from me. To get an access you have to be registered in the support forum. Just visit the forum and click Register in the upper part of the page. Choose your own login name and password and you can fill the other details about you. Do not forget to enter a valid e-mail address. When you are registered in the forum then please email me your real name and the login name from the forum and I will grant you an access to the download section.

3. Why does Explorer crash so often after I have installed Dalifer?

We have tried to make sure that there are no bugs in Dalifer but of course no software is error free. The most critical is that there are many other applications creating thumbnails and those applications might conflict with Dalifer. So if you experience any crashes of Windows Explorer (or other application) after installing Dalifer the first thing you should do is to disable it using Disable Dalifer in Configuration. If the problems disappear then try to re-enable it again, but disable all Dalifer’s functions in Configuration (Thumbnail, Property page, …). If there are no crashes at this point then try to enable Dalifer’s functions one by one until the crash appears. This way you will find out what function of Dalifer does cause problems on your system. This information will be vital to us when we will try to solve your problem. The other important information to report is the version of Windows and what other image manipulating software you have installed in your system.

4. Why is not possible to insert EXIF information into TIFF?

It would be possible to insert the EXIF information back into TIFF file in theory. But the TIFF file format is so diverse that we will not be able to guarantee that the resulting TIFF file will be correctly readable in all the possible cases. Therefore we have decided not to include this feature.