Hi Mike,

To quote the tag name documentation:

"Note: If you are familiar with common meta-information tag names, you may find that some ExifTool tag names are different than expected. The usual reason for this is to make the tag names more consistent across different types of meta information. To determine a tag name, either consult this documentation or run exiftool -s on a file containing the information in question."

ExifTool handles many types of meta information, and attempts to provide a uniform interface across all of these types.

This explains the date tag names, but I don't think it explains the MeteringMode differences. I can't remember now why I named that one specific metering mode "Multi-segment" because that was over 3 years ago when I added that tag, and it is just another name for "Pattern" metering. There may be some things I would name differently now given the experience I have gained over the last 3 years, but unless there is a very good reason to change them I stick with my original choice to provide the best backward compatibility with earlier versions of ExifTool.

I hope this helps.

- Phil