Geotagging not working with Panasonic Lumix GH6

[romanholiday]

Hi again,

Just wondering if there is any progress/update? 

Thanks.

[StarGeek]

Phil is currently away and will be back next week.

[romanholiday]

Is Phil back? 

[romanholiday]

Any update? My GH6 is gathering dust... 

[Phil Harvey]

Sorry for the delay.  This is likely going to take a couple more weeks.  I have to be very careful when writing raw files, and it will take time to test this properly.

- Phil

[romanholiday]

Thanks for the update and good luck! 

[Phil Harvey]

Wow.  What a time waster.

I spent some time trying to find some Adobe software that runs on MacOS 10.14 to view the GH6 RW2 files, but the new software doesn't work on my system (after going through half of the install procedure and downloading 2GB of stuff, the Adobe Bridge installer finally informs me that I need to upgrade my system before installing.  Thanks Adobe), and the old software doesn't load GH6 files.

But I found a version of SilkyPix that works on my system and shows the same problem.

That was the good news.  Now for the bad news:

I can change everything in the RW2 file except for the location of the raw data, and the file views fine in SilkyPix.  But as soon as I move the raw data to any other offset, the image gets corrupted in SilkyPix.  I can use ExifTool to edit the file fine, as long as I insert enough padding to keep the raw image at the same location.

I did a binary search for pointers that may need updating, and did find another pointer hiding in IFD0:PanasonicRaw_0x0044, but updating this didn't help.  And surprisingly, if I set IFD0:RawDataOffset to all zeros in the original image it still displays OK.  So the raw data offsets in the file are not used.  All I can do is assume that these offsets have been hard coded for this camera model.  I can't express how insanely bad form this is for the Panasonic programmers.  It is bad enough to have 2 pointers to the raw data (there should only ever be one pointer to one piece of data), but to ignore them both and hard code the offset is another level of stupidity.

The bottom line is that I won't be able to enable writing these RW2 files until Panasonic and Adobe can fix their software to use the stored offset(s) properly.

- Phil

[romanholiday]

This is terrible news.

What exactly do you mean when Panasonic fix their software? Does this mean we have to wait for a firmware update for the camera?

Also, is this just bad programming or done deliberately by Panasonic so that EXIF data cannot be altered?

Thanks.

[Phil Harvey]

I doubt that it was done deliberately.  More likely it is lazy programming.  Of course, this sort of laziness results in more work and problems down the road for everyone involved. 

If I am correct, it is the raw viewer software that is the problem.  A camera firmware update won't help.

- Phil

[romanholiday]

Forgive me if this is a dumb question, but what does the Panasonic Raw Viewer software have to do with altering the exif data in a RAW file that will go straight to Adobe Lightroom/ACR or Capture One or any other software? It will never even touch any Panasonic software!

 

[Phil Harvey]

I don't know how adobe gets the algorithm for decoding raw images, but I'm guessing they got it from the Panasonic programmers because both Adobe and Panasonic software have the same behaviour here.

- Phil

[wywh]

Maybe you could use Adobe DNG Converter as a workaround. exiftool can insert GPS to such .RW2 converted to .dng.

I used Adobe DNG Converter for a while when waiting macOS support for Canon EOS R6 .cr3.

https://helpx.adobe.com/camera-raw/using/adobe-dng-converter.html

[Phil Harvey]

While Adobe DNG Converter has had its own issues, Matti's idea is a good one.

However, I've had time to settle down a bit and may consider an ExifTool patch to keep the raw data at a fixed offset.  I've always resisted this because it will limit what you are able to write to the file, but maybe I should try this here.

Can you tell me if the following ExifTool-edited file can be opened in your viewers?:

https://exiftool.org/tmp/test_fixed_offset.rw2

- Phil

[wywh]

Can you tell me if the following ExifTool-edited file can be opened in your viewers?:

https://exiftool.org/tmp/test_fixed_offset.rw2

macOS 12.6 Preview or Photos or GraphicConverter 11.6.2 can not open it.

Photoshop 2022 23.5.1 and Lightroom Classic 11.5 open it OK.

- Matti

[Hubert]

Adobe DNG Converter 14.5.0.1177 converts it successfully.

But Affinity Photo 1.10.5 opens it like this:



And Graphic Converter 11 like this:



Sorry...