exif module not loaded

I received the following message while installing Omeka 1.5.3:

"exif" module not loaded
Without the exif module loaded into PHP, Exif data cannot be automatically extracted from uploaded images.

My host (A Small Orange) responded as follows:

Exif should be loaded on your server:

root@samwell [~]# php -m | grep exif
exif

As for fileinfo module, that isn't something that we can add is it is very memory intensive and requires us to recompile php which isn't possible upon request on our shared servers.

Is it preventing you from continuing with the install because of those issues or can you proceed despite them?