This is a very specific request about Canon DPP, not about the many other wonderful products that are out there. Please by all means make other suggestions, but I would appreciate it if this thread did not become a debate about which processing tools are superior.

This is a repost, originally in the post-processing section that only got a couple of responses.

I am relatively new to the DSLR game ( 3years ) although not to photography in general (my first Canon SLR was an AE-1 in a 1976) and currently use a T3i with a few other things wrapped around it. Some of those wrappings are Canon manual focus lenses modified to work on EOS DSLRs with Ed Mika conversions: FL 55mm f/1.2, FD 135mm f/2.0, FD 35-105mm f/3.5, FD 500mm reflex f/8.0, and also a Samyang 8mm fisheye.

As all DPP users know, not only do we have differences with 'legacy' equipment support between DPP 3.x and DPP 4.x, but many current Canon lenses are not (yet) supported in DLO, and many older ones or off brand lenses probably never will be.

I have been playing with EXIF data in raw (.CR2) files using EXIFtool and it's associated GUI tool for Windows and also PhotoMe.

So far I have been able to create EXIF profiles with EXIFtoolGUI to at least display the actual lens descriptions etc. in DPP 3.x, so that something taken with say, an FD 135mm f/2.0 lens shows up as that. However that doesn't allow switching on the lens optimizations in DPP.

Using PhotoMe together with Canon lens tag numbers I have been able to (file by file) set the lens type, short and long focal length numbers to a supported lens type such as the EF 135mm F2L, and then use the lens optimization capabilities. Similarly for my other unsupported lenses. It is definitely an interesting experiment.

Have others tried this approach with Canon DPP and if so do you have any thoughts or guidance to offer?

The EXIF editing tools I am using seem to be fairly old (or at least the Windows GUI based versions), and not being maintained regularly so there may be better approaches.

Many thanks for any thoughts or ideas.

I now have automatic Digital Lens Optimizer working in DDP3 and 4 on my FD 300mm F4 by naming it as an EF 300mm F4L IS USM. It works very well and instantly fixes CA on the shots taken so far. I have found that DPP needs all of the parameters for the lens setting in PhotoMe.

I think one of the problems with PhotoMe is that their Canon Makernotes xml file was last updated in February 2009 so does not contain the later lenses. Canon however only support later models for some lenses. For example PhotoMe does not have 494 Canon EF 600mm f/4.0L IS II USM but canon list only this model of 600mm lens.

I am now at the point of trying to edit the PhotoMe xml file to add some of the later lenses but at present don't know how to do this. Can anyone help with this?

So far I have not experimented to find out which ones are required. I went through the values in PhotoMe and corrected all of the ones that I could see were incorrect.

The first one is Lens Name: This can only be set by entering a numerical value. I think this comes from the Canon.xml file.
Lens Type: Is required. I have typed this in exactly the same format as is shown in Lens Name.
Lens focal length= 300 for this example
Long Focal=300
Short Focal=300
Focal Type=Fixed
Focal Length=300

They can easily be found by typing in "lens" or "focal" in the find box at the bottom of the screen.

Some, if not all of the values were set by the programmable AF confirm chip. It would be great if the lens specific values could be written to the chip instead of the generic ones it comes with but that is beyond my ability. Anyone out there?

Latest Update
It's been cold and raining so I've had a little time to develop this further. I have now done the above for four different FD lenses and enabled a suitable Digital Lens Optimizer for each. It greatly reduces chromatic aberration, which is the biggest flaw when using longer FD lenses on DSLR's and improves peripheral illumination.

If a suitable lens profile is listed in DPP but not available in PhotoMe, you can edit the lens details into the Canon.xml file using notepad. There are certain rules that have to be adhered to but it works perfectly. I won't bore you with the details now but I can list the procedure I have followed or forward an edited file to you.

Interested to know if you have tried the PhotoMe procedure in my previous post and if it worked for you.

I'm still working on this, but spent a bunch of time yesterday. I think I have found a good solution but am still testing it.

Progress report and some questions:

PhotoMe works well in the way you describe. The downside to PhotoMe is that I haven't found a way to avoid having to type in the parameters for each new image. It does however work effectively.

I have been investigating using EXIFtool and EXIFtool GUI. That has the advantage (for me) that a profile can be created and saved that modifies the EXIF file with a customizable default set of parameters that can be applied very quickly - one click for load default parameters - and thus becomes very efficient addition to the workflow. So far, I have found that only two parameters are required for any given prime lens to unlock the DLO capabilities in either DPP3 or DPP4.

It seems that zoom lenses need a little extra or different information and I am still exploring that.

Part of the challenge is that the tag descriptors used by PhotoMe do not seem to be an exact match for those used in EXIFtool, so I still have to track that down.

I have not yet played with the xml data. If that the file under Program data (in Windows) called something like 'latestcomponentlist.xml'? That appears to contain lens profile information, but the lens ID numbers don't seem to match the decimal lensname / lenstype# values in PhootME/EXIFtool.

Interesting stull, but I feel that collectively we are making progress and unlocking some useful capabilities.

Cheers!

Thanks for the info. The route you are following sounds as if it may yeild good results. I didn't go down the ExifTool route as I found it crashed each time I saved. I think it may be due to where my .exe file is stored.

I don't know if this helps you but I have just tried to find the minimum tags that need to be changed to enable the DLO functions for a prime lens. Changing the Lens Name alone (by entering numerical value) enables Digital Lens Optimizer. To enable the manual adjusment below, I had to enter Short Focal and Long Focal. No other tags were altered. I'm wondering if these values can be changed in the AF confirm chips. This would hopefully then save us from making any changes.

Cheers

Glad to see you are having fun and some success with this.

Have you considered using this

https://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=193&platform=Windows

This tool is to generate lens profiles for use in lightroom and ACR
some lenses are already profiled by other users.

Maybe there is a possibility of transferring lens data to the canon tool. It is highly likely that additional profiles can be added, after all canon is hardly likely to create a new program version every time they add a new lens to the line up.

The Xml file mentioned may have all the information needed to create a new profile.

Update on progress for anyone that is interested.

It is relatively straightforward to update the EXIFdata in a .CR2 file to turn on the additional DLO tools using either EXIFtool or PhotoMe.

The EXIF values (tags) that need to be modified for prime lenses are the LensType and FocalLength. For zoom lenses the MinFocalLength and MAxFocalLength tags are required that match the details for the LensType code selected. More detail on EXIFtool and PhotoMe is below.

Why bother to do this? For me there are two reasons. One is that since I use some old, adapted Canon manual lenses and also a Samyang fisheye lens and if I am going to do any post-processing on an image I want to be able to update the EXIF data that describes the specific lens. The focus confirmation chips available provide basic focal length and max aperture information but not much more.

The second reason is that the additional tools that can be enabled in Canon Digital Photo Professional raw/JPEG processing software Digial Lens Optimizer module can be useful. They only work for lenses that Canon provides a profile for, which is typically the more recent EF / EF-S / EF-M lenses. For lenses where a legitimate profile doesn't exist modifying a small number of parameters will enable the tools. The lens profile will not be a perfect match for the unsupported lens, but can still have some value.

PhotoMe and EXIFtool both work but have some differences in useage and EXIF Tag descriptions.

With PhotoMe the required tag descriptors are as follows:

Prime lenses

Lens Name: ( a numeric value) such as 174 which is a Canon EF 135mm F2L USM

Focal Length: (a numeric value) which does not have to match the lens profile, but it makes sense to use the focal length of the lens in use.

Zoom Lenses:

Lens Name: ( a numeric value) such as 228 which is a Canon EF 28-105mm F3.5-4.5 USM

Focal Length: (a numeric value) which does not have to match the lens profile. For zoom lenses I use the minimum value for the lens in use, but any value seems to work

Short focal: (a numeric value) which must match the selected lens profile, in this case 28

Long focal: (a numeric value) which must match the selected lens profile, in this case 105

Entering those values will enable the DLO tools.

With EXIFtool / EXIFtool GUI the required tag descriptors are as follows:

Prime lenses

-canon:lenstype#: ( a numeric value) such as 174 which is a Canon EF 135mm F2L USM

-ExifIFD:FocalLength#: (a numeric value) which does not have to match the lens profile, but it makes sense to use the focal length of the lens in use.

Zoom Lenses:

-ExifIFD:lenstype#: ( a numeric value) such as 228 which is a Canon EF 28-105mm F3.5-4.5 USM

-ExifIFD:FocalLength#: (a numeric value) which does not have to match the lens profile. For zoom lenses I use the minimum value for the lens in use, but any value seems to work

-canon:MinFocalLength#: (a numeric value) which must match the selected lens profile, in this case 28

-canon:MaxFocalLength#: (a numeric value) which must match the selected lens profile, in this case 105

Entering those values will enable the DLO tools

The advantage of the EXIFtoolGUI approach is that a lens workspace profile can be created and saved in EXIFtoolGUI for future use. That profile can include multiple parameters including the actual lens description that can be loaded into EXIFtoolGUI, applied as default values and saved for any specific file with very few clicks.