NameThatLens is a shareware, cross-platform, desktop application (for Windows, MacOS and Linux) for adding manual lens information to camera RAW files.

Many of the photographs you will find in the galleries on this site were taken with classic/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. It is therefore not possible to record this metadata in the image RAW file or processed JPEG file. I personally find this unacceptable and maddening! What I really wanted was a simple way to keep a record of all my lenses and be able to quickly and easily add the desired information to my photographs.

After hunting around the internet for a while, the only solution I found that came close to what I wanted was the excellent LensTagger plugin for Lightroom. This plugin did nearly everything I wanted, but (obviously) only works with Lightroom. As I often work with different tools (Darktable for example) on operating systems for which Lightroom is not available (Linux) I decided to create this little application ad share it with anyone who might find it useful.

NameThatLens, in its current form, is essentially a GUI for the wonderful ExifTool by Phil Harvey, but I have plans to make the application standalone in the near future.

Important Note: This software is currently in something of a Beta phase, if you identify any bugs or problems then please report them via the forum.





