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| Erwan Hesry/Unsplash |
Do you ever shoot with older lenses that aren’t capable of transmitting metadata to the camera when you shoot? If so, you might want to try out NameThatLens, a cross-platform program that simplifies the process of adding lens information to photo files.
NameThatLens was developed by Georg Fiedler, a photographer who often shoots with classic and vintage manual lenses. ‘Unlike with a modern auto-focus lens, a digital camera has no way of determining what lens was used to take a photo, or indeed what the aperture and focal length were set to,’ says Fiedler in the NameThatLens announcement post, adding ‘it is therefore not possible to record this metadata in the image RAW file or processed JPEG file.’
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Fiedler says he came across the LensTagger plugin for Lightroom, but felt limited, because he often uses other post-processing programs such as Darktable. So, he set out to develop his own version—one that would work across Windows, MacOS and Linux computers. The result was NameThatLens.
In Fiedler’s own words, ‘NameThatLens, in its current form, is essentially a GUI for the wonderful ExifTool by Phil Harvey.’ But the goal is to turn it into a standalone program ‘in the near future.’
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Currently, you can create author profiles, lens profiles and image parameters. The author profile tab of NameThatLens adds artist and copyright information to the images, the lens profile tab is a collection of the manual lenses you shoot with and the image parameter tab lets you set the aperture, focal length (if it’s a zoom lens) and other details.
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As of writing this, the following formats are tested and proven to work with NameThatLens: JPG, ARW, ORF, and RAF, although Fiedler notes that most any image file you throw its way should ‘theoretically’ work.
Fiedler notes that the program is in Alpha phase, meaning there’s still work to be done and bugs to squash. However, if you’re fine with possibly running into a few snags, you’re free to download it and take it for a spin. Currently, the MacOS and Linux versions are available, with the Windows version set to be ‘released shortly.’
You can find out more information on NameThatLens, complete with installation instructions on Fiedler’s NameThatLens webpage.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)