The camera make is the manufacturer name a device writes into the EXIF Make tag (0x010F). It is a plain ASCII string in IFD0, the first directory of the EXIF block, which a JPEG keeps in its APP1 segment. Model comes right after it.
What manufacturers actually write
Nobody registers make names, so each company picks a spelling and sticks with it for years. These show up constantly:
CanonNIKON CORPORATIONSONYFUJIFILMApplesamsung(lowercase, on Galaxy phones)Google
Case and corporate suffixes matter the moment you group a photo library by brand. A case-sensitive filter for "Nikon" misses every Nikon file.
Images produced by software, renders and most AI output included, usually carry no Make. A file that claims to come from a camera but has an empty Make has probably had its EXIF rebuilt by something.
Why ExifTool cares about the camera make
The vendor block called maker notes has no standard layout. Nikon and Apple start theirs with an ID string; Canon doesn't, so ExifTool picks the Canon decoder from the Make value. Change Make and the decoding stops. On a Canon EOS RP JPEG:
$ exiftool -G1 -s -Make -Model photo.jpg
[IFD0] Make : Canon
[IFD0] Model : Canon EOS RP
$ exiftool -a -G1 -s photo.jpg | grep -c '^\[Canon\]'
129
$ exiftool -overwrite_original -m -Make=Generic photo.jpg
1 image files updated
$ exiftool -a -G1 -s photo.jpg | grep -c '^\[Canon\]'
0
$ exiftool -a -G1 -s -u photo.jpg | grep -E "0x0006|0x0095"
[MakerUnknown] Unknown_0x0006 : Canon EOS RP
[MakerUnknown] Unknown_0x0095 : EF50mm f/1.2L USMThe bytes are all still there. They just show up as unknown entries, and two of them still name the body and the lens in plain text. Setting Make back to Canon brings all 129 tags back. So faking the brand is cosmetic: anyone running ExifTool with -u sees the real camera.
Editing or deleting Make
The EXIF reader shows Make for JPEG, TIFF, PNG and WebP files. The EXIF editor rewrites it in JPEG and TIFF; the field takes up to 128 characters and rejects commas, colons and a few other symbols. To delete it with ExifTool:
exiftool -Make= photo.jpgIf the point is to hide which camera took the picture, deleting Make alone does little. Model, the lens tags, the serial number and the maker notes all say the same thing in other words.