Perhaps I could have been a bit more clear: You can write IPTC strings containing any arbitrary series of bytes using ExifTool. It is up to you to encode them with the desired character set. ExifTool does not translate IPTC character strings. So to write UTF-8, the values that you assign must be valid UTF-8 byte sequences.

The value of setting CodedCharacterSet is that it informs other applications that your IPTC strings contain UTF-8 characters. As far as ExifTool is concerned though it doesn't matter, because ExifTool places the translation in your hands.

So maybe you shouldn't be so amazed after all... ;)

- Phil