Adding missing lens data, other shooting parameters

[Sir Nameless]

Two different but I think related questions about editing data that would normally be in EXIF:

1. I have a 40-year-old (+/-) manual lens that the camera records as "K or M lens". I would like to specify which lens it is somewhere in the metadata. I understand from some reading that editing EXIF is (may be?) a bad idea. Is there someplace else that is appropriate to store this information? At worst, I could tag it with a keyword...

2. Similarly, when producing a composite image (HDR, stitching, focus stacking) the shooting parameters (e.g. ISO, shutter, f/) are lost. Is there an appropriate place to record this information in the final image? IS it even appropriate to copy this information over?

Thanks!

[Mario]

The name of the lens is not encoded in plain text (as a string) in the EXIF data but in form of a combination of several numerical tags.
ExifTool manages lens data in tables in order to determine the "name" of the lens from these numerical fields. Often different camera vendors use the same numbers for different lenses. Or use different numbers for the same lens over the product lifetime. This is all pretty messy.

Of course, when the XMP metadata standard was released over 15 years ago, camera vendors could have abandoned the 30 year old EXIF metadata mess and just use XMP. Which would also allow the camera to write the correct lens name in clear text  - for the benefit of all. But camera vendors don't give a sh*t for what would help their users. Clean and usable metadata does not show in the ads and the journalists and reviewers don't give a sh*t either. So we still have to deal with the nonsense invented 30 years ago, when processing power in cameras and image site were very limited.

There a maybe ways with ExifTool to do that. And I recall a software / Lightroom plug-in which was designed to fill in lens data for manual lenses.

But before you start, ask yourself: "Do I really need all the lens details for my photos"? "What do I want to do with this info later"? Would a plain comment in the image description or something sortable/searchable like a keyword in XMP not fulfill the same purpose?

[Sir Nameless]

Thanks for the answer; that was helpful. Sad to hear what a mess everything is, but I'm not unfamiliar with things that are build up over time and the baggage of the past that keeps getting dragged into things. So, not surprised.

Yes, I think keywords or plain text descriptions should be sufficient. My motivation was to have things organized consistently, and to be able to learn from success/failure (This worked great/sucked, what lens and F/ did I use?). That kind of thing.

Right now, I only have one lens that does this, so for the time being it won't cause confusion. It would be nice to be able to properly record this info, but now that you've explained how it works I can see it's not all that feasible.

[mastodon]

There are two Lightroom plugin for that I found, but not used:
Negative Lab Pro
Lenstagger
and there is the free program Analog EXIF, but it is not under development anymore, and not really finished a stable version.