Lens metadata not recognized

[John Doogan]

I am using a Laowa 12mm lens on a Sony A7R3 and importing HDR pano images to Lightroom. As it is a manual lens I am using the lens tagger plugin to add the lens data such as focal length, aperture, lens name... The plugin is working as I can see the embedded metatdata in the exported files. I've attached a jpg for reference, and some screen shots.

However the metadata is not recognized on import to PTGui - I get the message:

"PTGuil needs to know whether the images were taken with a fisheye lens or a regular lens, but this could not be determined from the EXIF data. Please tell what kind of lens was used..."

So the HDR bracketed exposures are not recognized and I don't get the option to automatically link the images.

As I am doing 360 HDR panos I really need to get this working as it would be too time consuming to do manually. 

[Erik Krause]

Am 02.03.2021 um 20:46 schrieb John Doogan:

> However the metadata is not recognized on import to PTGui - I get the
> message:
> "PTGuil needs to know whether the images were taken with a fisheye lens or
> a regular lens, but this could not be determined from the EXIF data. Please
> tell what kind of lens was used..."

This is probably because the lens EXIF data is not in the PTGui
database. Since it's added later and hence not standardized I guess
PTGui won't rely on it.

> So the HDR bracketed exposures are not recognized and I don't get the
> option to automatically link the images.

This should be unrelated. PTGui needs to read the exposure data for it.
Since exposure time and ISO is controlled by the camera the images
should at least contain that values. PTGui assumes the aperture to be
constant if it is missing. Hence it detects HDR brackets correctly for
my Samyang 12mm, which is also a manual lens. Check if those data is
present on Image Parameters tab.

--
Erik Krause
http://www.erik-krause.de

[PTGui Support]

Hi John,

It's a rectilinear lens, it doesn't need any special treatment in PTGui.
Only fisheye lenses are included in the built-in database.

So just select 12mm, 'regular lens, not a fisheye'. If you enable the
'always use' checkbox, it will be done automatically next time.

The bracketing issue is unrelated. Please see 7.3:
https://www.ptgui.com/support.html#7_3
If you need more help with this, please save your project after loading
the images and post the project file here, so we can look.

Kind regards,

Joost Nieuwenhuijse
www.ptgui.com

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[John Doogan]

Thanks for the prompt responses!  I will investigate over the next few hours. One thing I had missed was an option from the lens database that appears to recognize the lens (screenshot attached)  

I need to work out what I'm doing wrong as occasionally I have had it all come together and the full HDR 360 is automatically recoginzed once I have got passed the initial EXIF data notice.

[John Doogan]

Hello Joost,

I have followed your recommendations and enabled 'always use'.  I'm pretty familiar with shooting brackets and the Sony A7r3 makes it easy so I'm pretty sure my settings were correct.

I have checked the image parameters in the attached project, and they do all seem to conform to the rules - only shutter speed varying, constant aperture and ISO. But I still don't get the option to automatically link images. In the Exposure/HDR tab I do get an option to "Group bracketed exposures into separate blend planes...", and it also seems to recognize that I have 5 different exposures: "The source images were taken at 5 different exposure levels. For each exposure....."  If I activate True HDR in this and hit the optimize now button in this panel, PTGui still doesn't appear to link the sets of 5 exposures.

I've attached the project file for reference. Thanks!

I'm getting a constant error trying to post this message - I will try with out the attachment project file which can be downloaded here: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AikS2sLpY8cEmdRVVSz_F7VAaTgyRw?e=pw2uDL

[John Doogan]

Actually I've done a few more test HDR panos and I'm not getting the problem I was having with that project I posted. Everything is working as expected so don't worry about spending time on it. 

[John Doogan]

I've now located the source of the problem. My Sony 7r3 camera is occassionally introducing a glitch where if I set it to take 3 or 5 frames motordrive bracket, sometimes one of the bracketed sets repeats an exposure rather than changing the shutter speed. I've found at least one instance where I had two exposures in a bracket at 1/8000 sec and the one that was supposed to be at 1/160 was missing.  Not sure how to fix this as it would appear to be a camera fault.

At least pleased to have got to the source of the problem. I appreciate all the help on this forum, it is very useful.