EXIF DATA - "No Flash"

[photo_pro]

I have posted a lot of photos, and know that flash was used. Yet when viewing the photos and associated EXIF data in my gallery, I noticed that it reports "No Flash".
I use a Canon 350D and 20D.

Is there a problem ?

I had a look at some other member's galleries, in particular looking at the lighting, and must say that in some cases I believe the members used flash, but the EXIF also reports "No Flash", thus making it difficult to learn and or judge lighting correctly.

OH and actually just noticed this is an OLD issue, discussed in another thread, but NOT RESOLVED - any ideas when it will be ?

[ronsc]

PBase has been aware of this problem for two years and has done nothing about it. There is apparently no resolution forthcoming, so don't hold your breath waiting. This is typical PBase "customer service."

I usually manually add flash info to the tech notes data on the "edit image" page, so at least viewers know a flash was used. But if you click "full exif", it still shows no flash.

[nooutlet]

Perhaps PBase has been aware of the problem for two years, but the programmers at PBase(other than Slug and Emily I should say) have been at PBase for just under a year. Some of that time was spent familiarizing ourselves with the way PBase works for the user and then familiarizing ourselves with the way PBase works on the inside. No one took up fixing the EXIF issue right after that; I'm not sure any of us three were aware of it at that time actually.

Starting in late February, I took the task of fixing EXIF extraction among other tasks I had going at the time. It's more than just changing one line to read the Flash value correctly though because we're changing which program we use to extract the EXIF and redesigning the whole process.
Before I began, I wanted to find out what values people care to see.
Then I have to figure out how to get those values most reliably. EXIF information is very inconsistent from one image to another. Several image-editing programs strip or alter the EXIF. Even without 3rd party programs, EXIF data will differ from one model of camera to the next(let alone camera make). I'm still working on this to some extent.
Finally, I'll be separating the process of extraction from the old code and into a module made specifically for the purpose. If that's a bit technical, it means I'll be taking out the code that used to do EXIF extraction from an old file which we don't want to rely on any more and writing my code into a new file which we can then rely on just for EXIF extraction.