Can I make lens string consistent?

[alanterra]

I am sorry if this question is obscure or naive, but I am a little perplexed.

I have been using a Macintosh program called "Houdahgeo", which uses exiftool to write latitude/longitude for images to the xmp sidecars. What I have found is that if I geocode an image, the <aux:Lens> field gets one value, but if I edit the file in Bridge (CS5) before geocoding the field gets a different value. For instance, for one lens, the value if I geocode first is "LUMIX G VARIO 14-45mm F3.5-5.6", while the value if I edit in Bridge first is "LUMIX G VARIO 14-45/F3.5-5.6". This is the case for all the lenses for two cameras that I have (a Canon and a Panasonic). What I find is that once these values are written to the .xmp files, they "stick"--ie, whichever program wrote the sidecar first set the value, and editing with the other maintains the original value.

Is there any easy way to get these to be consistent? I think I want the Bridge values, but am not sure it really matters. But having the inconsistency is getting in the way of things.

TIA

[Phil Harvey]

You can run this command on all your XMP files to make them consistent:

exiftool -if '$xmp:lens eq "LUMIX G VARIO 14-45mm F3.5-5.6"' -xmp:lens="LUMIX G VARIO 14-45/F3.5-5.6" -r -ext xmp DIR

where DIR is the root directory containing all your XMP files.  If you are on Windows, swap the single and double quotes in the first argument.

- Phil

[alanterra]

thanks. that solved the problem

Alan