Edit Lens Info

[eikelben]

Hello,

I am a newbie with EXIFTool (just downloaded it today).  I'm excited to learn, but there is obviously a steep curve.  I found a site (http://studio.messlinger.com/2009/03/08/exiftool-and-the-automator/) that had the beginnings of a great EXIFTools-for-dummies explanation, but it's still a little over my head.  Here's what I've got:  When shooting with my Nikon D700 and 35mm PC lens, no lens info is recorded in the EXIF.  I would like to create an automator action to add the lens info (aside from aperture as that would need to be done on a shot by shot basis) to the files so when I organize them in Lightroom, they don't read "0mm ƒ/0.0".  Can someone point me in the right direction to learn how to do this?  I know on forums it's not acceptable to stop by and ask for an immediate answer – I did do a search and read through what I found but it is still unclear to me.  Thanks in advance for your help. 

Nate

[Phil Harvey]

Hi Nate,

Automators are more difficult on Mac than other platforms because they don't interact very well with command-line applications.  Your reference has one example that does almost exactly what you want, but as you know it isn't simple.  Typically people write a bit of AppleScript to do such things on the Mac.

On the command line it is easy, but you need to do a bit of typing.  For example, typing this in a Terminal window then pressing RETURN will add a lens name to all images in your Pictures directory ("~" represents your home directory):

exiftool -lens="35mm PC lens" ~/Pictures

Now, whether or not Aperture respects the Lens tag written by this command is another story.  You would have to test this yourself since I don't own Aperture.

- Phil

[eikelben]

Thanks Phil,

I'll have to sort out a better way of doing this I think.  I only need to add it to frames shot with my 35mm PC lens (as all others are modern and relay EXIF data).  (For what it's worth, I'm trying to integrate this with Lightroom, not Aperture – I'm not sure if that makes it easier or more difficult.) 

I'm surprised editing the EXIF data is this complicated. 

[Phil Harvey]

Adding lens data only to images which don't already contain this information is easy.  You just add something like this to the command:

-if 'not $lens and not $lensid'

- Phil