Show Me That Camera: Improving Flickr's More Properties Page
Flickr gives you the option of sharing detailed technical information about images by displaying Exif data. When this option is enabled by a photographer you're able to follow the "more properties" link (found under the Additional Information heading for each photo) and get a wealth of information about aperture, shutter speed, focal length, iso settings and camera model.
Most of the time this is more than enough information to figure out what you want to know. But what if you're aren't familir with the camera model? Maybe you want to know if it is a point and shoot, or dslr, or something else? If you're in the market for a new camera and you're impressed with the image quality you've just seen then you you might want to know how big is it physically and what resolution it's capable of. You can find all that info of course through google but easier is better right?
Paul Bausch of onfocus has made it easier by creating a greasemonkey script for Firefox called Flickr Camera Images.
The script adds an image of the camera used to the more properties page and links to the camera's listing on Amazon.com. Occasionally things get wonky, such as when Amazon doesn't have the camera listed, but for the most part I found it to be pretty effective in the trial run I gave it. While I'm pretty familiar with Canon cameras I'm very unfamiliar with specific Panasonic, Kodak, etc models. It's cool to see what the camera looks like and easily scope out their specs and sales price. I think this would be very helpful when you're looking to buy a new digital camera and using Flickr as part of your comparison shopping process.
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