Unable to fetch lens from EXIF

Hey everyone,

Last night I posted a few photos (For the first time in a lonnnnnnnnng time). I posted them using the 'fetch' function by copy/pasting a hyperlink to my SmugMug website. AMASS was able to successfully attach the image and fetch the EXIF info except for the lens - I had to choose that from my gear list.

I also went through and added to my gallery all of my previously posted photos here on POTN. Some of the posts were pretty old so I had to do the "edit" and "save" trick to re-fetch the EXIF. Again, no matter the source, AMASS was unable to fetch the lens used from the EXIF.

I just posted a new photo this morning from my Smugmug account using the embed image and the same problem - no EXIF lens info. I thought maybe Smugmug was stripping this from the EXIF, but when I loaded the photo on my site and checked the EXIF it definitely had the lens listed.

It is interesting that in all these cases AMASS was able to fetch the focal length the image was shot at, so it made selecting the lens a little easier!

Just wanted to let you know in case this is a bug or known issue or something.

Thanks for the lovely forums

The same thing happens to me, AMASS finds everything except for the lens info.

Please link to some example images so I can investigate.

I downloaded the image "IMG_6074-XL.jpg" found in https://photography-on-the.net …70&mg=339958&i=​i124368142 and it does not have lens in EXIF. There is the focal lenght value in EXIF, but AMASS won't show it unless a lens is chosen.

If the image was in Flickr gallery and the lens added there to that gallery page, the lens gets usually retrieved ok, even if it is not in image EXIF. For all other photo sites the EXIF inside the image the one AMASS looks at.

Pekka, when I look at the EXIF in that image the lens is there. What I did notice though is that in the EXIF the lens doesn't have a space between EF-S and 17-55mm whereas in AMASS it has. Could it mean that AMASS doesn't recognise the lens because it is listed a tiny bit different than in the EXIF? Here's a screenshot:

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Levina de Ruijter wrote in post #18338331
What I did notice though is that in the EXIF the lens doesn't have a space between EF-S and 17-55mm whereas in AMASS it has. Could it mean that AMASS doesn't recognise the lens because it is listed a tiny bit different than in the EXIF?

What a great insight, Levina!

Writing code must be so tough - to account for every little misspelling and typo that anyone might ever make - what a daunting task!

.

Pekka wrote in post #18338317
Please link to some example images so I can investigate.

Posting an image here for you Pekka:

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Here are 2 screen captures...

In the second screen, I wish I could capture the drop down window to show you that my lens is indeed in the list. As you can see it does pick the focal length of the lens at 31mm. (Sigma 17-70)

Thank you for looking into this for us!! You are the greatest!!

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Levina de Ruijter wrote in post #18338331
Pekka, when I look at the EXIF in that image the lens is there. What I did notice though is that in the EXIF the lens doesn't have a space between EF-S and 17-55mm whereas in AMASS it has. Could it mean that AMASS doesn't recognise the lens because it is listed a tiny bit different than in the EXIF?

I just quickly checked the EXIF with windows file properties and there was no lens name. That is another bug in Windows.

As you said it is shown in EXIF and AMASS sees it internally, too.

AMASS already takes spelling errors in EXIF lens names into account, but I checked the code after your report and there was indeed a bug there which affected EF-S and EF-M lenses (if Lens ID is not available). It will be fixed in next version. Thanks!

Inspeqtor wrote in post #18338683
Posting an image here for you Pekka:

Hosted photo: posted by Inspeqtor in
./showthread.php?p=183​38683&i=i63739362
forum: Forum Talk

The reason for not getting the lens from this image is that there is not enough lens related info in EXIF.

There is
Lens id: 137
Lens model: 17-70mm

As there is no clear hint of lens manufacturer, AMASS can not get the correct lens. There are two 17-70mm lenses in database, and also there are several lenses with lens id 137 (they do overlap as each manufacturer decides their own set of id numbers). Basically here one could guess that manufacturer is Sigma as both 17-70mm's found are Sigmas, but then the lens id given is wrong as the correct ones are either "137.6" or "131.3", which means the program that saved the EXIF most likely rounded the id to closest integer, which is a bug as they should be treated as strings. As you can see this gets never very simple

As I think it is best to get no lens at all if the guess might be wrong, so there is no lens set for that photo.

Later when I have more time (finalizing 1.7 coding needs my full attention now), I'll figure out ways to make this lens/camera guesswork better/easier. Perhaps after metadata detection has finished AMASS could give you a small dropdown menu with possible selections for that undetected lens and/or camera with all possible/guessed items that could be it. Then the detection would later bring to top of list your last choices for this set of incomplete data, thus learn from it - you could then just click "accept guesses" and go on.

Pekka wrote in post #18338799

Inspeqtor wrote in post #18338683
Posting an image here for you Pekka:

Hosted photo: posted by Inspeqtor in
./showthread.php?p=183​38683&i=i63739362
forum: Forum Talk

The reason for not getting the lens from this image is that there is not enough lens related info in EXIF.

There is
Lens id: 137
Lens model: 17-70mm

As there is no clear hint of lens manufacturer, AMASS can not get the correct lens. There are two 17-70mm lenses in database, and also there are several lenses with lens id 137 (they do overlap as each manufacturer decides their own set of id numbers). Basically here one could guess that manufacturer is Sigma as both 17-70mm's found are Sigmas, but then the lens id given is wrong as the correct ones are either "137.6" or "131.3", which means the program that saved the EXIF most likely rounded the id to closest integer, which is a bug as they should be treated as strings. As you can see this gets never very simple

As I think it is best to get no lens at all if the guess might be wrong, so there is no lens set for that photo.

Later when I have more time (finalizing 1.7 coding needs my full attention now), I'll figure out ways to make this lens/camera guesswork better/easier. Perhaps after metadata detection has finished AMASS could give you a small dropdown menu with possible selections for that undetected lens and/or camera with all possible/guessed items that could be it. Then the detection would later bring to top of list your last choices for this set of incomplete data, thus learn from it - you could then just click "accept guesses" and go on.

Pekka,

You amaze me with your knowledge of all this computer geek stuff. It is ALL way above my knowledge!

Thank you for all your hard work at keeping this great forum running so smoothly

I like that suggestion, it could help streamline the exif tagging for members!

Side note, I know you are javascripting the forum, are you using Angular2 by any chance? I am trying to pick up Typescript and Angular right now... the syntax and terms are giving me a bit of grief for some reason. I blame it on age. Not sure if we are going to settle on Bootstrap for the styling or whatever CSS library is out there right now.

TeamSpeed wrote in post #18339096
I like that suggestion, it could help streamline the exif tagging for members!

Side note, I know you are javascripting the forum, are you using Angular2 by any chance? I am trying to pick up Typescript and Angular right now... the syntax and terms are giving me a bit of grief for some reason. I blame it on age. Not sure if we are going to settle on Bootstrap for the styling or whatever CSS library is out there right now.

No, I do not use any frameworks.

I have checked them out from time to time, but I see no benefit in them to my work, and I want to minimize any coding "automation", I want full control on every line of code, and how the code is structured internally. I do not have a team to work with, so I do not have to worry about using a common framework so that unknown/clueless people may participate in the work

Of course as I some day must get into making a mobile app for notifications etc, I will need to dig into some mobile frameworks, but as they evolve all the time I see no point in trying to learn the current versions "in advance".

Thanks for looking into this