Camera EXIF Metadata: What Mirrorless Bodies, Drones and Action Cams Record

Camera EXIF Metadata: What Mirrorless Bodies, Drones and Action Cams Record

Dedicated cameras are often assumed to be the private option, because most mirrorless bodies have no GPS chip of their own. The location risk does shrink, yet a camera writes things a phone rarely does: its own serial number, the lens serial number and pages of maker notes about how every shot was taken. A drone or an action camera adds its own satellite receiver, which brings back location and adds altitude on top.

That changes what you scrub for. A wedding photographer delivering JPEGs is mostly leaking gear and identity, while a drone pilot posting a coastline is leaking a precise position in three dimensions. The sections below start with the fields every camera shares, then cover the Canon EOS R5 Mark II, the Sony A7 IV, the DJI Mini 5 Pro and the GoPro HERO13 Black.

Fields a dedicated camera writes that a phone usually does not

Every one of these cameras writes the standard EXIF block of make, model, exposure and timestamps, so the differences sit in the fields beyond that block. Knowing which ones apply to your camera tells you what a delivered file gives away and what you lose by removing it, which matters when a client expects copyright or credit information in the file.

Serial numbers and maker notes

The EXIF standard has tags for the camera body's serial number and for the lens model and lens serial number, and many bodies fill them in on every frame.¹ A serial number ties every photo you deliver to one physical camera, which lets anyone holding files from separate jobs connect them to the same photographer.

Maker notes sit in a manufacturer-specific block that can hold shutter counts, autofocus details and firmware data, and they leave with the file unless you remove them. Because each manufacturer formats that block differently, a generic viewer may show little of it while specialised tools read it in full, so assume the whole block is readable by someone.

Location from a pairing, a chip or a GNSS receiver

Camera bodies without GPS still record location when you pair them with a phone app, which copies the phone's position into each photo during the connection. Drones and action cameras carry their own receivers and record position directly, and the GPS tag set includes altitude next to latitude and longitude.² An aerial photo with altitude intact shows where you stood and how high the drone flew.

Location is also the field people most often forget they enabled. A pairing set up once for remote shutter control keeps tagging photos on every later shoot, so check the scrubber's field list for GPS on files from any body that has ever been connected to a phone, even if you never meant to record location.

RAW files need an export first

The scrubber works on JPEG, PNG and WebP files, so CR3, ARW and DNG RAW files need an export to JPEG in your editing software first. Many editors offer a metadata option in the export dialog, and depending on how it is set, the exported JPEG can still carry the camera, lens and location fields. Loading the exported file into the scrubber shows what the export kept, and you remove those fields before delivery.

Remove EXIF Metadata from Canon EOS R5 Mark II Photos

A client or buyer who downloads a delivered R5 Mark II file can reconstruct far more than the shot itself, from your exact camera body to your lens inventory. Professional mirrorless bodies are often assumed safer than phones by default, simply because they lack a built-in GPS chip, but that assumption only covers one of several metadata fields worth nuancing. The Canon EOS R5 Mark II is one of the most widely recommended mirrorless bodies in 2026, built around a new 45-megapixel full-frame backside-illuminated stacked sensor capable of up to 30fps with its electronic shutter.¹ Like every Canon EOS body, it embeds detailed EXIF metadata into every file, including the camera's serial number, lens data, and GPS coordinates if a connected GPS accessory or smartphone link is active.

Specifications¹

Why the R5 Mark II needs an accessory for GPS, unlike a phone

Smartphones write GPS coordinates automatically because they have a dedicated GPS chip built in and active by default. The R5 Mark II, like most professional mirrorless bodies, has no such chip on board.² GPS only enters the metadata if you pair the camera with Canon's Camera Connect app over a smartphone connection, or attach a dedicated GPS accessory to the camera body. Consequently, R5 Mark II files are less likely than smartphone photos to carry location data by default, but photographers who do pair their camera with a phone for geotagging purposes should check explicitly. The habit of assuming 'cameras don't do GPS' no longer holds once that pairing is active.

A fingerprint that outlives any single shoot

The camera's serial number persists across its entire service life, connecting files delivered years apart to the same physical body. This fingerprint outlives any single shoot and cannot be disabled or rotated in the camera settings, which is why scrubbing is the only reliable way to remove it before delivery. Unlike GPS, which depends on an accessory or app pairing, the serial number writes itself into every file automatically, with no setting to disable it.

The serial number is the metadata field most specific to this camera

Every photo captured on a given R5 Mark II body carries the same serial number in its EXIF data, creating a fingerprint that links files across every shoot that camera has ever been used for. For photographers delivering files to multiple clients, this means a careless client or a public upload could theoretically connect work done for one client to work done for another, simply by matching serial numbers across delivered files. Selling the camera body later does not retroactively change any of the files you have already delivered, so the fingerprint stays attached to that entire body of past work indefinitely. The field itself is the standard EXIF tag 0xA431, BodySerialNumber, sitting in the Exif IFD alongside the lens serial and owner name fields.³

What Canon's MakerNote tags reveal about your camera settings

Canon embeds a proprietary MakerNote IFD inside every EXIF block, recording details that go well beyond the standard exposure fields.⁴ The MakerNote on an R5 Mark II file includes the specific autofocus mode selected (Single, Servo, or AI Focus), the metering pattern (Evaluative, Spot, or Centre-weighted), the Picture Style (Standard, Portrait, Landscape, or Neutral), and whether features like Auto Lighting Optimiser or Highlight Tone Priority were active. Canon's Digital Photo Professional software reads this data to help photographers review their shooting technique, but it also creates a detailed behavioural profile inside every file.

Why camera settings metadata can identify your workflow

A photographer who consistently shoots in AI Servo mode with Evaluative metering and the Picture Style set to Neutral is likely a sports or wildlife shooter. A photographer who uses Single AF with Spot metering and the Portrait Picture Style is likely a portrait or wedding shooter. When you deliver files to a client, the MakerNote data reveals not just what settings you used, but what kind of photographer you are. Scrubbing removes the entire MakerNote block, so no workflow details survive in the cleaned file.

Scrubbing CR3-to-JPEG exports from the R5 Mark II

The R5 Mark II captures RAW files in Canon's CR3 format, which is based on the ISO Base Media File Format and stores metadata in a structure that differs from JPEG's APP1 segment.⁵ When you export a CR3 file to JPEG through Digital Photo Professional or Adobe Lightroom, the conversion process copies selected metadata fields from the CR3 into the new JPEG's EXIF block, including the camera serial number, lens model, and any GPS data that was present in the original.

Why you must scrub the JPEG, not just the CR3

The scrubber does not support CR3 files directly, so scrub the JPEG your CR3 export creates rather than assuming the RAW file itself is somehow safer. A common mistake is to assume that because the CR3 is a proprietary format, its metadata is somehow safer than a JPEG's. In practice, the JPEG export inherits the most sensitive fields from the CR3, including GPS coordinates and the camera serial number. Running the exported JPEG through the scrubber removes all inherited metadata, leaving a clean file ready for client delivery.

Inside the CR3 container, that metadata lives in four distinct TIFF-based boxes named CMT1 through CMT4: CMT1 holds the primary Exif IFD0 data, CMT2 carries the detailed Exif sub-IFD, CMT3 stores Canon's proprietary MakerNotes including the serial number, and CMT4 holds the GPS IFD. When Digital Photo Professional or Lightroom exports a CR3 to JPEG, it reads across all four boxes and writes their contents into the single EXIF block the JPEG format expects, which is exactly how the serial number and GPS data make the jump from RAW file to JPEG export without you doing anything extra to preserve them.

Remove EXIF Metadata from Sony A7 IV Photos

An A7 IV with no app connection has no GPS chip at all, but the same camera paired with the Sony Creators' App for convenience features picks up exactly the location risk a dedicated camera body would otherwise avoid. The A7 IV remains one of the most popular full-frame mirrorless bodies in active use in 2026, built around a 33-megapixel back-illuminated Exmor R sensor paired with the BIONZ XR processor and 759 phase-detection autofocus points.¹² Like other Sony Alpha bodies, it embeds detailed EXIF metadata into every JPEG, including the camera's serial number and exposure settings, with GPS available only through the paired smartphone app.

Specifications¹

GPS on the A7 IV depends entirely on a phone pairing

Like most dedicated mirrorless cameras, the A7 IV has no internal GPS hardware. The only way location data enters a photo's EXIF is through the Sony Creators' App, which relays GPS coordinates from a paired smartphone to the camera during an active Bluetooth connection. Photographers who never pair their camera this way will not have GPS data in their files at all, while those who do should treat that connection the same way they would a smartphone, with the same scrubbing habit before sharing.

The app exists for genuinely useful reasons, instant transfer to a phone for quick social posting, remote shutter control, and yes, geotagging for travel and event photographers who want their shots automatically located. None of those conveniences require GPS specifically, but the location feature ships active by default once the pairing completes, which is exactly how it ends up writing coordinates without a deliberate decision on your part.

What the well-known video limitations mean for your photo metadata

Reviewers consistently flag rolling shutter in 30p full-width 4K video and a capped burst rate from the non-stacked sensor as the A7 IV's most discussed shortcomings.² Neither limitation has any bearing on still photo metadata. Every JPEG, regardless of how it was captured, single shot or part of a continuous burst, carries the same EXIF structure: serial number, lens data, exposure settings, and GPS if a phone pairing was active at capture time.

Treating a paired camera like a phone

Once a Creators' App connection has been active, the camera should be scrubbed with the same habit you would apply to a smartphone, since GPS now flows into its files the same way. ExifTool records the source of a fix in the GPSProcessingMethod tag, whose permitted values under the EXIF spec are GPS, CELLID, WLAN, or MANUAL, so it is usually possible to tell from the file itself how the coordinates got there.³ The convenience features that made the pairing worthwhile do not come with a way to selectively keep the location data out, so a single scrubbing habit covering every export is simpler than tracking when the pairing was active.

How the BIONZ XR processor handles metadata during burst shooting

The A7 IV's BIONZ XR image processor handles both pixel data and metadata as separate parallel streams, which means the camera writes a complete EXIF block to every frame even during continuous shooting at 10 frames per second.⁴ Each frame in a burst sequence receives the same metadata structure: camera serial number, lens model, exposure settings, and GPS data if the Creators' App pairing was active at the time of capture.

Why burst mode does not change your scrubbing workflow

A single photo and a 30-frame burst from the same session carry identical metadata per file. The only difference is volume: a burst produces more files to process, but each one requires the same scrubbing step. For event photographers delivering 500 or more images from a single wedding, scrubbing every file in the export folder is faster than reading each file by hand, and every frame gets the same treatment regardless of whether it was a single shot or part of a sequence.

What the A7 IV's Camera Info IFD reveals about your gear

Sony embeds a proprietary Camera Info IFD inside the EXIF MakerNote field, recording details such as the camera's firmware version, the specific lens model attached at capture time, and whether any in-camera corrections like lens distortion compensation or vignetting reduction were applied.⁵ This data is useful for photographers who want to review which lens and settings produced a particular result, but it also creates a detailed equipment inventory inside every file.

Why lens compensation data matters for privacy

The Camera Info IFD can reveal which lenses you own, since the lens model and serial number get recorded when a compatible Sony E-mount lens is attached. Before you deliver a batch to a client, check what lenses your delivered files reveal, since a competitor who examines the metadata of multiple files can build a list of your lens inventory simply by reading the LensModel tag. Scrubbing removes the entire MakerNote block, including the Camera Info IFD, so no equipment details survive in the cleaned file.

Fstoppers' review of the A7 IV highlights one example of why the camera needs to track lens identity so precisely: focus breathing compensation, a feature that only works with a specific selection of lenses and introduces a small crop when active. The camera has to know exactly which lens is mounted before it can decide whether to apply that correction, which is part of why LensModel and lens serial data get written into every file rather than left out. The same lens-recognition system that enables convenience features like breathing compensation is what leaves a detailed equipment trail in your metadata once you start delivering files.

Remove EXIF Metadata from DJI Mini 5 Pro Photos

A travel creator posting an aerial shot of a coastline, or an agent sharing a real estate listing photographed from above, rarely thinks twice before publishing it widely. The DJI Mini 5 Pro is the first sub-250-gram drone in DJI's Mini series to carry a 1-inch CMOS sensor, capturing 50-megapixel stills with an 84-degree field of view and a 225-degree rotating gimbal.¹ Drone photos carry GPS metadata recorded with the aircraft's own positioning system at the moment of capture, which is typically more precise than a smartphone's GPS, and altitude data specifically gives aerial photo metadata a dimension of precision that ground-level photos simply do not carry.

Specifications¹

Why drone metadata carries more precision than ground photos

A drone determines its position using a combination of satellite GNSS positioning and onboard vision systems for stability, which together typically produce more accurate coordinates than a smartphone relying on GPS alone.² Because the Mini 5 Pro also tracks altitude continuously during flight, photos can carry a height value alongside latitude and longitude, adding a dimension of precision that ground-level photography rarely includes. The combination of GNSS and vision positioning also means the aircraft keeps recalculating its position throughout the flight, so the coordinates embedded at the moment of capture reflect a continuously refined fix rather than a single rough reading.

The travel and real estate use case carries elevated risk

Aerial photography is frequently used for two purposes that both involve broad public sharing: travel content posted to social media, and real estate or vacation rental listings showing a property from above. In both cases, the photographer often intends to share the image widely, which means any GPS and altitude data left in the file reaches the largest possible audience.

Why property and travel drone shots expose more than viewers expect

An aerial shot of a property exposes not just an approximate area but the exact flight position relative to the structure, which is more specific than most viewers would expect from a wide establishing shot. A travel photo carries the same exposure even when the destination already feels public, since the metadata can pinpoint a specific overlook or beach access point rather than the general region implied by a caption. The altitude that travels with the coordinates makes that reconstruction easier, because a single height value can be used to test candidate buildings against the line of sight in the frame.³

How the Mini 5 Pro's dual-frequency GNSS improves precision

The DJI Mini 5 Pro receives signals on both the L1 and L5 frequency bands from GPS and Galileo satellite constellations simultaneously.⁴ Dual-frequency reception allows the receiver to correct for ionospheric interference, a type of signal distortion that can throw a single-frequency GPS reading off by several metres. In open sky conditions, the Mini 5 Pro typically achieves horizontal accuracy within 0.5 metres and vertical accuracy within 1.0 metre, which is roughly three times more precise than a standard smartphone GPS chip.

Why higher precision means higher privacy risk

More accurate coordinates mean more exposing metadata. A smartphone photo with GPS accurate to 5 metres might place you somewhere on a particular street. A Mini 5 Pro photo with sub-metre accuracy can identify the exact balcony, rooftop, or window the drone was hovering next to when the shutter fired. Scrubbing removes the GPS IFD and altitude data from the file, so the precision advantage the drone captured never reaches the viewer.

Scrubbing a whole drone photo collection

A single aerial shoot for a real estate listing or a travel vlog can produce 50 to 200 photos, each carrying the same GPS and altitude metadata. Processing them one at a time is how the scrubber works, and it is ready for the next file as soon as you download the cleaned one, which keeps an entire flight's worth of images moving quickly.

A workflow for real estate and travel drone photographers

Export the JPEGs from the drone or from Adobe Lightroom, select all the images from a single property or location, and strip GPS from each photo in a flight's set rather than reviewing each file's GPS tag individually. Each file gets processed individually and made available for download. Use the cleaned versions for your listing, social media post, or client delivery. Keep the originals with full metadata in a private archive for future re-edits or flight log verification. Working through the whole set in one sitting covers every image from the shoot, so no file slips through with coordinates still attached.

The Mini 5 Pro ships with 42GB of onboard storage and saves stills as JPEG or DNG, which means a single flight session photographing multiple angles of a property or a stretch of coastline can fill a meaningful share of that storage before you ever transfer files to a computer. DNG is the publicly documented archival RAW format Adobe publishes, an extension of TIFF 6.0, and it carries its own metadata directory structure separate from the EXIF block a JPEG uses.⁵ In practice that means a single flight session photographing multiple angles of a property or a stretch of coastline can fill a meaningful share of that storage before you ever transfer files to a computer. Because the scrubber only reads JPEG output rather than the RAW DNG files, plan your export step to convert or select the JPEG versions before dropping them into the scrubber. That one extra step at export time is far less work than manually reviewing GPS fields on dozens of images pulled straight off the drone's storage.

Remove EXIF Metadata from GoPro HERO13 Black Photos

Still-photo EXIF and video telemetry are two different systems on the HERO13 Black, and conflating them is the most common mistake GoPro owners make when trying to scrub their footage. The GoPro HERO13 Black captures 27-megapixel photos and brought GPS data logging back after it was removed from the previous HERO12 model, recording position, altitude, and speed at 10Hz using the same GPS chip found in the HERO11.¹ For still photos, this GPS data appears as standard EXIF metadata, while video files carry a separate, more detailed telemetry stream used for overlays in GoPro's Quik app. A mixed library spanning several camera generations makes this even less intuitive, since metadata habits cannot be applied uniformly without first checking which model actually captured a given file.

Specifications¹

Why GoPro photo metadata history matters for your library

Anyone with a mixed GoPro library spanning several camera generations should know that GPS behavior has not been consistent across models. The HERO12 Black shipped without GPS recording at all, a change from the HERO11 before it, and the HERO13 Black brought GPS back using the same GPS chip as the HERO11.² Consequently, whether a specific photo in your library carries GPS metadata depends on which camera generation captured it, not just whether location services were enabled.

Why a video tool will not clean a photo, or vice versa

GPMF telemetry extractors and EXIF scrubbers solve genuinely different problems and are not interchangeable. A tool built to parse the dense GPMF stream out of a video file has no concept of a JPEG's EXIF segment, and a scrubber built for photo EXIF cannot reach into a video's telemetry track. Picking the wrong tool for the file type in front of you simply will not work.

The GoPro Telemetry Extractor project, built specifically to pull GPMF data out of video files, documents this distinction directly: the HERO13 records GPS position, altitude, and speed at 10Hz during video, matching the same telemetry rate as the HERO11 before it. That project exists as a dedicated tool precisely because GPMF is not a format any general-purpose EXIF utility understands, and no EXIF scrubber would know where to look for a telemetry stream sampled ten times per second. The two ecosystems, one built around EXIF tags and one built around GPMF frames, simply do not overlap.

Photo EXIF versus video telemetry: two separate systems

Still photos on the HERO13 Black use standard EXIF metadata for GPS, recorded once per shot in the same way a smartphone photo would be. Video, by contrast, uses the GPMF (GoPro Metadata Format) telemetry stream, which logs position, altitude, and speed at 10Hz throughout the entire recording, far denser than a single EXIF tag. These are genuinely different systems requiring different tools, so a scrubber built for photo EXIF will not touch the telemetry embedded in a video file. The photo-side fields are the standard EXIF GPS set, stored in their own GPS IFD alongside the rest of the metadata rather than in the telemetry stream.³ Knowing which system applies to a given file is the first decision to make before reaching for any cleanup tool at all.

What the HERO13's GPS chip actually records in each photo

The HERO13 Black uses the same Ublox Max-M10S GPS chip that appeared in the HERO11 Black, recording position, altitude, and speed at 10Hz during active recording.⁴ For still photos, the GPS data gets written into standard EXIF tags: GPSLatitude, GPSLongitude, GPSAltitude, and GPSTimeStamp. The altitude value is particularly precise on the HERO13 because the chip barometric pressure sensor provides altitude readings accurate to within roughly 1.5 metres, which is tighter than the GPS-only altitude estimate.

Why altitude matters more on an action camera than a phone

A smartphone photo typically records altitude only when GPS is active, and the value can drift by 10 metres or more in urban environments. The HERO13's barometric altimeter gives a more stable reading, which means the altitude metadata in a GoPro photo is often more accurate than what a phone records. For a viewer trying to determine where a photo was taken, a precise altitude reading combined with GPS coordinates narrows the location to a specific floor of a building or a specific trail elevation.

Cleaning up after a mixed GoPro and phone shoot

Many creators shoot with both a GoPro and a smartphone during the same session, then combine the footage in editing software. The two devices write metadata differently: the GoPro uses standard EXIF with a simpler MakerNote structure, while a phone like a Samsung or iPhone writes a much larger MakerNote block with scene classifications, AI processing tags, and lens correction data.⁵

A single scrub handles both sources

Regardless of which device captured a given file, you can sort a mixed GoPro and phone shoot in one pass, since the tool detects and removes whatever metadata each file carries, whether it is a GoPro photo with GPS and altitude, a phone photo with scene optimiser tags, or a screenshot with basic timestamp data. One pass through the scrubber cleans the entire mixed collection, so you do not need to sort files by source device before processing.