Lens Detail Recording in EXIF

[pippy]

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18 minutes ago, ChampagneCharlie said:

...I don't think it's totally unreasonable of me to wish my 10k camera body to be able to accurately record the lens that I'm taking a particular image with, especially if said lens is made by said body manufacturer......Maybe in M12...

I can't see how anything which Leica might do with a future body would change the situation. As marchyman said back in post #6;

21 hours ago, marchyman said:

...The process breaks when you have "20 or so 50mm lenses" because there are not 20 or so codings for 50mm lenses available...

Modern Leica lenses, of course, pose no problem. It is also possible to have some of the older non-6-bit-coded lenses modified by Leica by changing the rear mounting flange. There is, however, no possibility of accurately post-coding many of Leicas own 50s from the past such as an LTM 50mm f3.5 Elmar; there have simply been too many different models produced over the last 100 years for it to be worth Leica's time and effort. Nor, stating the obvious, can any non-Leica 50 be coded accurately in terms of profile.

It is possible to manually select a profile for any one particular lens and, if this profile is always used for the same lens, this makes identifying that lens straightforward. For example I don't have a 50mm f1.4 pre-ASPH Summilux but do have a 1953 50mm f1.5 Summarit so when using the latter I manually select the profile for the former. Similarly I can select from a choice of three non-coded profiles for each of my 35mm lenses so can also tell what was used and when. Once the DNG files have been downloaded into a folder I will name it (as an example) "MM 35mm LLL-8 Element+Yellow" or "MD 35mm Summilux+Pola" (etc...etc...) for long-term recording of this info.

But there are not 20-odd 50mm lens profiles in the menu from which you might choose and if you can't physically tell the camera which lens is fitted how can the camera know?

One solution might be to utilise those profiles which might not be used in day-to-day shooting; stuff like the various 75s, 90s and 135s. If snapping with a 50mm f1.8 Canon Serenar you might set it manually from the menu as an 11817 (assuming you don't also have an 11817). A 50 f2.8 Elmar might be set as an original 11820 Noctilux (assuming you don't have...) and so on and so on until you have input all 20+ lenses under different profiles. Having noted which was which you would be able to dial-in each lens with every change according to these notes. Electing to use profiles for these longer lenses would also tend to not interfere too much with the lens' native rendering.

Apart from that? I can't see any other way of selecting 20+ profiles for uncoded lenses.

Good luck in finding your own system.

P.

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[lct]

43 minutes ago, pippy said:

A 50 f2.8 Elmar might be set as an original 11820 Noctilux

... or a 50/2.8 Elmar-M 😉

 

[Al Brown]

Well in theory another option to put on a M12 wishlist would be a possibility of manually entering (and registering in menu) the NAME of the lens used (without corrections) to be written into EXIF. This is very doable and very user friendly - you enter once and then just select from a possible "USER LENSES" menu...

Edited February 23, 2024 by Al Brown

[pippy]

32 minutes ago, lct said:

... or a 50/2.8 Elmar-M 😉

Or, as you say, an Elmar-M! I believe the LTM- and M-mount versions of the 50mm f2.8 shared the same optical formula so the answer would be to code them both the same!

😸

Philip.

[pippy]

25 minutes ago, Al Brown said:

...another option...would be a possibility of manually entering (and registering in menu) the NAME of the lens used (without corrections) to be written into EXIF.

You mean that Leica could provide a virtual 'keyboard' in the Menu section? Yes; I suppose that would be an option. Especially if there is a touchscreen.

If it does happen you will be able to say "You Heard It Here First!"...

Wishing you good luck with that one!

😺

Philip.

 

[Al Brown]

Just now, pippy said:

You mean that Leica could provide a virtual 'keyboard' in the Menu section? Yes; I suppose that would be an option. Especially if there is a touchscreen.

If it does happen you will be able to say "You Heard It Here First!"...

Wishing you good luck with that one!

😺

Philip.

 

Haha thanks. There is one used to enter copyright info as a long standing digital M feature so no excuses there...

 

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[lct]

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2 hours ago, pippy said:

There is, however, no possibility of accurately post-coding many of Leicas own 50s from the past such as an LTM 50mm f3.5 Elmar [...]

Accurately no but approximately yes. My LTM 35/3.5 Elmar is hand coded as Summarit 35/2.4 for instance. Easy to do with coded adapters. Here on M11 at f/5.6 with no vignetting correction in PP. With a coded adapter for 50mm lenses i could do the same with a LTM Elmar 50/3.5 coded as Elmar-M 50/2.8 or otherwise. You know this perfectly of course but i'm not sure if the OP is aware of those possibilities.

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Edited February 23, 2024 by lct

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4 hours ago, ChampagneCharlie said:

Waste of time reponse.

Have your manservant take notes but don’t expect Leica to fix anything just to suit you.

[NigelG]

Wait till you find out that your M11 doesn’t even know which aperture you set on that lens it couldn’t name…🫣
 

(Beyond guesswork obv.)

Edited February 23, 2024 by NigelG

[pippy]

4 hours ago, Al Brown said:

Haha thanks. There is one used to enter copyright info as a long standing digital M feature so no excuses there...

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............

Is that a Vision from The Future?.......I have no idea what that thing is; I've had a really good search over my M-D Typ-262 and can't find that panel anywhere!

Seriously though; That might be a useful thing to have. Sort-of. Does it exist on a real M camera and can lens information be dialled-in using that thing?

Philip.

Edited February 23, 2024 by pippy

[pippy]

3 hours ago, lct said:

...My LTM 35/3.5 Elmar is hand coded as Summarit 35/2.4 for instance. Easy to do with coded adapters. Here on M11 at f/5.6 with no vignetting correction in PP. With a coded adapter for 50mm lenses i could do the same with a LTM Elmar 50/3.5 coded as Elmar-M 50/2.8 or otherwise...

Oddly enough - and as discussed elsewhere a few months back so apologies to those who have read this previously - I only discovered the 'real' rendering of my 40mm f1.4 Nokton once I had lost the facility with my current 'Colour-M' camera to dial it in as an early 35mm Summilux and, retrospectively, realised that, having corrected numerous optical abberations in-camera (which, to its credit, it did superbly well), I was always losing much of the inherent character of the lens when used wide-open. Lesson-Learned the hard way.

The same sort of thing could be discussed ad nauseam in a 10,000-word lens-by-lens thesis; So Much To Say! So Much To Discuss!

Philip.

Edited February 23, 2024 by pippy

[lct]

A modern camera like the M11 doesn't need 6-bit coding to prevent colour shift issues thanks to its BSI sensor. The way i feel it, the main if not only visible effect of 6-bit coding is on vignetting which is minimal on 50mm lenses and easy to adjust in PP anyway.

[marchyman]

On 2/23/2024 at 3:05 PM, pippy said:

Seriously though; That might be a useful thing to have. Sort-of. Does it exist on a real M camera and can lens information be dialled-in using that thing?

Yes it is a real thing, but it is used for copyright and artist, not lens info.

Copyright and artist are single bits of metadata.  Lens info is spread over several bits of metadata not all of which are simple text strings.   When I use ExifTool to update lens info for an image I set the tags named "FocalLength, MaxApertureValue, Lens, LensInfo, LensMake, LensModel, and LensType.   I suspect some of those may not be needed in that they could be extrapolated from other fields, but what I have now works so I don't change it.

[Al Brown]

59 minutes ago, marchyman said:

Yes it is a real thing, but it is used for copyright and artist, not lens info.

Copyright and artist are single bits of metadata.  Lens info is spread over several bits of metadata not all of which are simple text strings.   When I use ExifTool to update lens info for an image I set the tags named "FocalLength, MaxApertureValue, Lens, LensInfo, LensMake, LensModel, and LensType.   I suspect some of those may not be needed in that they could be extrapolated from other fields, but what I have now works so I don't change it.

All I would need is such single bit of metadata to recall the lens used from the registered, manually entered future "USER LENSES" menu. The pseudo f/stop is already written and that is all that's needed for 90% of simple folks like me. I am POSITIVE this is easily doable. No corrections needed as I have said before, nothing else.

[ChampagneCharlie]

15 hours ago, Al Brown said:

All I would need is such single bit of metadata to recall the lens used from the registered, manually entered future "USER LENSES" menu. The pseudo f/stop is already written and that is all that's needed for 90% of simple folks like me. I am POSITIVE this is easily doable. No corrections needed as I have said before, nothing else.

That would be a useful feature for me. I'm not interested in corrections, either, just the ability to enter a name.

I (with zero knowledge of firmware engineering) would also imagine this is relatively easy to add. If nothing else, it's a change that future freezes can be blamed on!

[lct]

Would be a good idea to improve Cosina sales. Leica's i don't know.

[Al Brown]

58 minutes ago, lct said:

Would be a good idea to improve Cosina sales. Leica's i don't know.

There are quite a few Leica M lenses that do not have the entry nor were 6-bit coded.

[jdlaing]

58 minutes ago, Al Brown said:

There are quite a few Leica M lenses that do not have the entry nor were 6-bit coded.

Which M bayonet lenses aren’t in the menu?

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[Al Brown]

21 minutes ago, jdlaing said:

Which M bayonet lenses aren’t in the menu?

Let's do this: I will name, say, three, and the rest you will search for yourself. Fair enough?
 

11307, 11542, 11306, 11120... aw, I already overshot my limit.

[lct]

48 minutes ago, Al Brown said:

Let's do this: I will name, say, three, and the rest you will search for yourself. Fair enough?
11307, 11542, 11306, 11120... aw, I already overshot my limit.

Not to contradict you but 11120 (50/1.5) & 11542 (40/2) are not M lenses, and 11306 (35/2.8) & 11307 (35/2) cannot be coded. Not to say i don't like your idea but it would benefit non-Leica lenses in the first place so i would not expect Leica to complicate firmwares any further for them. YMMV.