Filter images for Lens make or type

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Level 1

21 points

Filter images for Lens make or type

I would like to filter my images for a particular lens, from among sever 1000 images shot using various cameras and lenses. Does Aperture 3 allow a filter which can do that, can you pls share the steps?

(Note: I tried the filter/search in Aperture and went through: Add rule> EXIF> Lens, however, it does not list any lenses there. Tried using the 'Lens minimum, Lens maximum' options too, but didnt work)

thanks in advance.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.1), Intel Core i7, 4 GB RAM, 500 GB HDD

Posted on Oct 15, 2012 5:56 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

léonie

Level 10

194,755 points

Oct 15, 2012 6:15 AM in response to hibhaven

You could try the following work-around:

Copy the name of your lens from the "Lens"-EXIF tag in the Info panel.
Define a smart search/ Smart album searching for "Text" and paste the name of the lens into the textfield, for example like this:

Searching for the lens: "Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 EX"

Regards

Léonie

P.S. Most of the lenses I use are showing as "unknown" lenses however - you will only be lucky for supported cameras or if you use an external tool to add the EXIF info.

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Answer 2

hibhaven Author

Level 1

21 points

Oct 15, 2012 7:18 AM in response to léonie

Thanks Leonie, With some help from what you mentioned above, I thinkn I have now figured out how to do this search.

I copied the Lens data from the Lens-EXIF info, as mentioned by you earlier, and then put it against EXIF>Lens>Includes, and voila, it searched all relevant images.

Earlier I assumed that Aperture would automatically read data of all lenses and provide it as a drop down, but thats not how it works. We need to pick out the information from EXIF data and paste it in the relevant field.

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Answer 3

Oct 15, 2012 1:56 PM in response to hibhaven

Exactly correct.

This let's me recommend one of the best things I think Aperture user's can do for themselves: set up one of the List views as a spreadsheet of all metadata (all that you can). The application of this to your question will be apparent.

What I recommend is added every single available metadata field to the List View -- Expanded Metadata Overlay.

"{Control}+j" will bring up the "Browser & Viewer Metadata" dialog. Select "List -- Expanded" from the View dropdown. Add _every_ field listed in the left column. Click "OK".

Now any time you change to List view ("{Control}+l" on my machine -- I don't think I customized this one), expanded view ("{Shift}+u" toggled between "Basic" and "Expanded" -- same as in the Browser) you will see, in spreadsheet form, a column for each metadata field that Aperture allows you to see. Scroll over to the column headed "Lens" and see how your lenses are named in the EXIF. Note that you can resize and move columns, and you can sort rows by any column (click the header, click again to reverse).

Most of my lenses are named. Cameras with fixed lenses frequently do not supply a lens name in the EXIF. Note, too, that the same lens may be listed differently by different cameras. Using the three metadata fields "Lens", "Camera Make", and "Camera Model" I can usually get the results I need.

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