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Searching Metadata For AF Mode


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<p>I have several thousand Nikon NEF RAW files that I'd like to search through and select only those of a certain focal length AND when the camera (D300 and/or D700) was in manual focus mode.</p>

<p>Can LR or Bridge search for this data and can it allow me to select those specific files for further processing?</p>

<p>If they can't then what other software can do something like this?</p>

<p>Thanks - John</p>

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<p>Focal length is available in EXIF, but focusing mode perhaps is not recorded.<br>

Since you have so many files, just look in there what you get. Do you see there information about focusing mode ?<br>

No software will be able to sort or search by a data that was not recorded by the camera.</p>

<p>Nikon cameras use EXIF 2.1 and the set of data provided by followers of this standard is defined here:</p>

<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exchangeable_image_file_format">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exchangeable_image_file_format</a></p>

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<p>Yes, for Nikon they give the focusing mode in the MakerNotes section of the metadata. Exiftool can see this (though it can't filter files by this).</p>

<p>FocusMode is the variable and the values are: Manual, AF-S, or AF-C</p>

<p>John</p>

<p>Can someone with LR verify that they can see the camera focus mode in their NEF files?</p>

<p> </p>

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<p>LR cannot see this natively, though plug-ins can show it. However, there's no easy way to filter on it or build a smart collection based on it.</p>

<p>In LR you'd have to do something convoluted like use an external program to find all the relevant files, then use an LR plug-in to set a flag in some piece of metadata that LR can filter/sort on. LR is great, but if you don't already use Lightroom, then I would start just for this purpose.</p>

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<p>

Building on Mark's response:

<p>

What you need is an app that can process the image files and build a simple text file with two

columns, file name and focus mode. Then you can easily process that file to build a second

text file listing only those files with a manual focus mode. This file you can then import into LR

with the plugin LR/Transporter (Google it) to mark those images in LR.

<p>

Here's what the two-column file looks like when I ran the app (I edited the text, putting in dashes to separate the columns, because of a limitation of the forum system):

<p>

MJR_20111125_5759.NEF-----MANUAL<br>

MJR_20111125_5760.NEF-----MANUAL<br>

MJR_20111125_5761.NEF-----MANUAL<br>

MJR_20111125_5762.NEF -----MANUAL<br>

MJR_20120123_5775.NEF-----AF-S <br>

MJR_20120123_5776.NEF-----AF-S <br>

MJR_20120123_5777.NEF-----AF-S <br>

MJR_20120123_5778.NEF -----AF-S <br>

MJR_20120123_5779.NEF-----AF-S <br>

MJR_20120123_5780.NEF -----AF-S <br>

<p>

I don't think you want an app that modifies EXIF data to somehow mark the relevant files with,

say, a keyword. I would think that you wouldn't want to write into thousands of files--too

dangerous. My approach doesn't modify the files at all.

<p>

Communicate with me offline for info about the app I mentioned (MacOS only).

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<p>Photo Mechanic can read these as variables ... {lens} and {focus} ... that can be added to the filenames, and then you could sort on filenames. It can even give you the full frame equivalent. The same variables can be written into the keyword field, or others. I would probably want to do it on copies of the files, but then I don't know your intent.</p>
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