A bit of work, but worth it.

I usually find images in my Lightroom catalog by first looking for the folder of interest, and that’s typically indexed on the lines of Subject matter->Location. For example, Street candids->New York City. Thereafter I find favorites using the Camera and Lens combination in the folders selected. It’s a fast and accurate system.

With film scans, of course, there’s no EXIF data about camera and lens and the Noritsu scans from Sharpprints proudly announce ‘Noritsu Koki’ in the ‘Camera’ field.

After migrating to the current subscription (ugh!) version of Lightroom Classic (LRc) I found that my previous approach to adding EXIF data to film scans no longer works. The EXIF app I used is broken and no longer round trips correct(ed) EXIF data to LRc.

The approach I know use requires a free application named LensTagger EXIF Tool – click on that link and you will find excellent installation instructions. In addition to the LensTagger plugin you need something named ‘EXIF Tool‘, and it’s easiest to place it in the same directory as the plugin. You need these tools as LRc does not allow you to edit the data fields of interest. The data path on a Mac in Finder is:

The plugin location.

And here are the contents of that directory:

Contents of the plugin directory.

Then, in Lightroom->File->Lightroom Plug-in Manager, you input that same path, thus, after adding LensTagger to the Plug-in Manager:

Setting up LensTagger in LRc’s Plug-in Manager.

The use instructions on the LensTagger site are clear so I will not repeat them here.

And here is the result, where I have set up LensTagger for my Leica M3 and 35mm Summaron RF lens – multiple setups are possible for different camera/lens combinations:

EXIF data for one image taken on film.

The reference to the ‘EZ Controller’ under ‘Software’ is to the Noritsu scanner’s controller. I leave that in to remind me the file came from SharpPrint’s scanner.

And here is the Metadata for that folder:

Metadata for film images in LRc.

Zoom out to see data for the catalog of all images in LRc and you get:

Metadata for the whole LRc catalog of 29,000+ images.

I need to change ‘M3’ to ‘Leica M3’ to conform with earlier naming, but you get the idea. An efficient system for cataloging and retrieving images in Lightroom Classic.

Order of processing: To avoid losing your processing adjustments, make sure to add EXIF data first then adjust exposure, contrast, and so on.