HDR Panorama Merge for Manual Lenses Without EXIF Aperture Data

I frequently shoot HDR panoramas with manual lenses (such as shift lenses). Since these lenses do not transmit aperture or exposure bias information via EXIF, Lightroom currently fails to recognize exposure brackets and shows an error message ("Cannot detect exposure values").

This makes it impossible to merge HDR panoramas directly inside Lightroom, even though the images clearly contain different shutter speed values and can be merged in other HDR/Panorama tools.

I understand Lightroom’s philosophy of non-destructive editing and not altering original EXIF data. However, it would be extremely helpful if Lightroom could:

• Allow manual grouping of bracketed images for HDR Merge (ignoring missing EXIF).

• Or provide an option to detect bracketed exposures based on shutter speed/ISO values only, when EXIF exposure bias is missing.

This would greatly improve the workflow for photographers using high-quality manual lenses, which are widely used in architecture and landscape photography.

Thank you for considering this improvement.