The Makernote is tag 0x927c in the Exif IFD, Exif.Photo.MakerNote. According to
the Exif 2.2 standard, the makernote
is "a tag for manufacturers of Exif writers to record any desired information. The contents are
up to the manufacturer, but this tag should not be used for any other than its intended purpose."
Most vendors do not publish their makernote specifications. Most of the specifications available on the Internet were reverse-engineered. Judging from the size of many makernote fields, manufacturers store a lot of information there and from the available specifications, some of this is certainly quite interesting. For example, makernotes may contain information about the lens used, contrast, saturation and sharpness settings, image quality settings, etc. For some more advanced camera settings, the Exif standard doesn't define a standard tag, so camera vendors have to resort to using the makernote. Unfortunately, in some cases, camera vendors store important information only in proprietary makernote fields, instead of using available Exif standard tags. The most infamous example for this is Nikon's ISO settings tag.
Most vendors write the makernote in TIFF format, i.e., in the same format as the rest of the Exif information is encoded. This appears to be a sensible thing at first glance. Unfortunately, in general it means that any change of an Exif tag, which moves the makernote field, will corrupt it. It is an inherent problem of the TIFF format that a writer must know the format and all extensions used, in order to be able to write changes correctly; unknown tags are potentially corrupted when they are moved (rearranged). But since makernotes are usually proprietary, Exif writers often don't know these details. The reason to write to the Exif data could be as simple as to add copyright information, an Exif comment, etc. Some camera manufacturers seem to have recognized this problem and now use a modified TIFF format with offsets relative to somewhere at the beginning of the makernote field for the makernote IFD to address the issue.
The following table summarizes the structures of the makernote field used by some vendors. Please let me know if you have additional information.
| Make | Format | Header | Endian 1) | Offsets 2) | Ref | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Canon | IFD | None | [2] | Some CR2 images have a non-zero next-IFD pointer | ||
| CASIO | IFD | None | [4] | |||
| CASIO | IFD, at offset 6 | "QVC\0\0\0" | Big-endian (MM) | Relative to the beginning of the makernote | [4] | |
| FUJI | IFD, usually at offset 12 | Starts with the string "FUJI" and a 4 byte pointer to the IFD | Little-endian (II) | Relative to the beginning of the makernote | [1] | Exif data uses big-endian (MM) byte order |
| Minolta, KONICA MINOLTA | IFD | None | [5] | Camera settings tag is encoded in big-endian (MM) style, regardless of the encoding style of the Exif data | ||
| NIKON | IFD | None | [3] | Models using this makernote include E990, D1 | ||
| NIKON | IFD, at offset 8 | "Nikon\0" followed by two bytes of unknown meaning | [1] | Models using this makernote include E700, E800, E900, E900S, E910, E950 | ||
| NIKON | IFD, usually at offset 18 | "Nikon\0" followed by 4 bytes which look like a version code and a TIFF header | From makernote TIFF header | Relative to the start of the makernote TIFF header | Models using this makernote include E5400, SQ, D2H, D70, D100, D200. Makernote IFD of the D200 has no next-IFD pointer. (Is this a bug?) | |
| OLYMPUS | IFD, at offset 8 | "OLYMP\0" followed by two bytes of unknown meaning | [1] | |||
| OLYMPUS | IFD, at offset 12 | "OLYMPUS\0II" followed by two bytes of unknown meaning | Relative to the beginning of the makernote | |||
| Panasonic | IFD without a next-IFD pointer at offset 12 | "Panasonic\0\0\0" | [8] | |||
| PENTAX | IFD at offset 6 | "AOC\0" followed by two bytes of unknown meaning | [11] | |||
| SAMSUNG | IFD | None | Relative to the beginning of the makernote | |||
| Sanyo | IFD | - | - | - | [6] | Not supported by Exiv2 yet |
| SIGMA, FOVEON | IFD, at offset 10 | "SIGMA\0\0\0" or "FOVEON\0\0" followed by two bytes of unknown meaning | [7] | |||
| SONY | IFD without a next-IFD pointer at offset 12 | "SONY DSC \0\0\0" | Seen in Jpeg images, e.g., from DSC-W7, DSC-R1 | |||
| SONY | IFD | None | Seen in SR2 images, e.g., from DSC-R1 |
1) If not specified, the byte order of the Exif data is applicable.
2) If not specified, offsets are relative to the start of the TIFF header.
Exif.org has another table with similar info and sample pictures: Digital Camera Sample Images. According to this source, (at least some) Ricoh and Kodak cameras do not write the makernote in IFD format.
[1] Exif
file format by TsuruZoh Tachibanaya
[2] EXIF Makernote
of Canon by David Burren
[3] Makernote
EXIF Tag of the Nikon 990 by Max Lyons
[4] "Makernote"
Exif tag of Casio by Eckhard Henkel
[5] Minolta
MakerNote by Dalibor Jelinek
[6] Sanyo
MakerNote by John Hawkins
[7]
SIGMA and FOVEON EXIF MakerNote Documentation by Foveon
[8] Panasonic
MakerNote Information by Tom Hughes
[9]
Various Makernote specifications from the
PHP JPEG Metadata Toolkit by Evan Hunter
[10] ExifTool, the most complete and up-to-date tool for reading and writing meta information in image files, by Phil Harvey