Photoshop How To

One of the more interesting developments for photographers over the past few years is the increasing availability of excellent manual focus lenses from independent optics manufacturers that are designed for use with modern digital cameras.

Some of these lenses work with both mirrorless cameras and DSLRs, while others are designed for one format or the other. The appeal often has to do with fast maximum apertures, compact sizes, excellent performance, and wallet-friendly prices. And for many photographers, the lack of autofocus capability isn’t a big drawback, especially when using fisheye or wide-angle lenses with their inherently generous depth of field.

There is one annoyance, however, due to the fact that most new manual focus lenses lack a chip for communicating with the camera. One implication of this is that you don’t have access to metadata when reviewing your results—unless, however, you know about the handy LensTagger plugin for Lightroom.

Swedish photographer Micael Widell loves manual focus lenses, and in the video below he demonstrates how to take advantage of LensTagger. After downloading and installing the plugin (there’s no cost but a donation is recommended), you simply select a bunch of images in Lightroom and EXIF data will appear in the Raw files of each shot—including data pertaining to any editing you did in Lightroom.

This 10-minute video clearly explains everything you need to know to get started after downloading the plugin on LensTagger’s website. You can find more helpful tips on Widell’s YouTube channel, and be sure to look at our earlier story with his seven commandments for capturing better images on your next photo walk.