Issues with LensTagger plugin for Lightroom

[RoyPrasad]

Sorry for the lengthy post, but it has to do with the LensTagger plugin for Lightroom. For several years, I've been successfully using this to edit EXIF data for manual focus or legacy lenses adapted to a non-OEM camera (e.g., Leica M lenses on Hasselblad or Sony cameras). The plugin uses exiftool and is not exactly robust, but if you set up the path for exiftool correctly and use the plugin's workflow as designed, it works. After I installed LR Classic 14.5.1, LensTagger stopped working. I endlessly get Error 256 or 512 or some other codes once in a while that I don't understand. About the only thing I can think of is, this plugin uses the /tmp folder to write/read some files, and it looks like there is some issue with the LensTagger plugin logic under macOS sandbox / integration and permissions. (My macOS is Sonoma version 14.6.1.) I've given both Lightroom and exiftool Full Disk Access on my MacBook, but that has not helped. If anyone else has experience with this issue or if the Adobe LR team has any suggestions, kindly reply. Many thanks in advance!

[ExUSA]

If you use EXIFTool via Terminal does everything work? Do you have the latest version? I use EXIFTool with custom scripts that integrate it with Bridge, and haven't seen any issues under Sonoma, Sequoia, or Tahoe.

[RoyPrasad]

Thank you for responding. Yes, I have verified that I exiftool via Terminal works. I've tested it on several raw files, one at a time. And yes, I also have the latest version of  exiftool (13.37) and LensTagger (1.9.2), as well as the latest versions of Lightroom and macOS.

[RoyPrasad]

Footnote to my post above: There was a new update to exiftool, 13.38. I updated my macOS to Tahoe 26.0 and installed the new exiftool version, but no luck. LensTagger still does not work, and I continue to get Error 256.

[JohanElzenga]

Most likely you'll have to give EXIFTools 'full disk access' permissions in MacOS. Check that this is enabled.

[RoyPrasad]

Hi Johan, thanks for responding, but as I said in my original post above, I have given both Lightroom and exiftool Full Disk Access in macOS. It has not helped.

[JohanElzenga]

Yes, but later you said you upgraded to MacOS 26, which might have revoked that access again. That is why I mentioned it. BTW, upgrading to MacOS 26, while Lightroom Classic 14.5 is not verified for it, is not the approach I would advise. It only adds one more level of possible incompatibility.

[RoyPrasad]

In general, I am not in a hurry to install a new version of macOS until a few months after Apple releases it. So I had been dragging my feet with Tahoe. But when the LensTagger plugin did not work, I decided to install the latest macOS, and also did the Full Disk Access again for LR and exiftool. Then there was an exiftool update, and I installed that too, and again, deleted / added back the Full Disk Access for it. And also restarted LR, restarted my MacBook ... It stubbornly refuses to work.

There is really not much to this code – a simple path to be specified (/usr/local/bin/exiftool) in the LensTagger plugin, and a handful of keywords and values in double quotes (e.g., Lens="Voigtlander 50mm Apo Lanthar"). This is not like some sophisticated or complex code to debug! A real head-scratcher why it doesn't work.

Lightroom should just natively provide this feature! It already has sophisticated metadata management, so just add a few more, e.g.:

• Lens maker (e.g., “Voigtlander")
• Lens model (“50mm f/2.0 Apo Lanthar VM")
• Max aperture (“f/2.0”)
• Focal length (“50mm”)
• 35mm Equivalent focal length (“50mm”)
• Aperture used (“f/5.6”)

[RoyPrasad]

BTW, I even tried placing exiftool in one of my public folders as below, and even that didn't work!

/Users/royprasad/LR/Plugins/LensTagger/exiftool

[ExUSA]

Is there an actual reproducable error code? Or is it random? Are you getting a Lightroom error or a system error?

[RoyPrasad]

Most of the time, I get this message:

Error: 256 - Failed to run the command.

There were a handful of times when I have seen error code 512 (kinda odd, that's 2 x 256), and one time there was a 5-digit code starting with the number 3 that I don't remember.

[johnrellis]

Run Lenstagger again until you get the error. Then in Finder, do the menu command Go > Go To Folder and paste in this line:

~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom

In that folder, find the file "lrc_console.log".  Rename it to be "lrc_console.txt" and attach the entire file here. That could provide clues.

[RoyPrasad]

Brillaint!!! No need to post, the log file had dozens of lines complaining Lightroom could not update EXIF data nor write back an "unknown" file format .3FR. That happens to be the raw file extension of images from Hasselblad cameras. For whatever reason, Lightroom can read these raw files (fairly accurately although not perfectly), but Lightroom can not write files in the .3FR format. That is where LR was choking.

The proper workflow is to feed the .3FR files through a Hasselblad application called Phocus, which then outputs files in various standard formats like TIF or DNG. It has its own editing capabilities, but I don't use them. I just read in .3FR files and out put them as .DNG files, before bringing them into Lightroom.

By pushing the .3FR files through Phocus and outputting .DNG files, I get the Hasselblad colors. But beginnning with the X2D II, Lightroom can read the .3FR files with almost the same colors, so except when color is critical, I've been reading the .3FR files directly into Lightroom. I guess I should stop doing that.

To make a long story short, I just grabbed all the .3FR files from my Lightroom's capture folder, put them through the Phocus sausage machine, output them as .DNG files and read those back into Lighroom, and now the LensTagger plug in works like a charm.

My compliments on your tremendous intuition, it fixed the problem! Thank you.

[johnrellis]

"For whatever reason, Lightroom can read these raw files (fairly accurately although not perfectly), but Lightroom can not write files in the .3FR format."

I'd like to investigate this and file a bug report.  In my test catalog, I've got sample .3fr files from 9 different Hasselblad models, and the command Metadata > Save Metadata To File works correctly on all of them.

Could you please share the "lrconsole.log" with the error messages?  Thanks.

[RoyPrasad]

Sure, here you go. Was .log, but I had renamed a copy of it to .txt, and this is attached.

[johnrellis]

"Error: Writing of 3FR files is not yet supported - /Users/royprasad/Selling/Capture/25-0924 Laowa9mm-0051 (X2D II 100C, Unknown).3FR"

That error is coming from Exiftool, which doesn't support writing into .3fr files.  Reading the release notes, Exiftool's author Phil Harvey is pretty scathing about Hasselblad's firmware programmers:

https://exiftool.org/ancient_history.html 

"Patched FFF reader to be more tolerant of the mess made by incompetent Hasselblad programmers (wrong IFD count for some values)"

Lenstagger should do a better job of surfacing such errors to the user.

[ExUSA]

There should be an error when running commands directly via EXIFTool, but the OP said that works. So... ?

[RoyPrasad]

"There should be an error when running commands directly via EXIFTool, but the OP said that works. So... ?"

Ah! This is where I goofed. I tested exiftool in the terminal mode using .DNG files, and it worked flawlessly! It never occured to me to test it with .3FR files. So I never saw the error message in the terminal mode.

[ExUSA]

These problems can be hard to track down. But this makes sense as to why it was intermittent.

[Sean McCormack]

"Error: Writing of 3FR files is not yet supported - /Users/royprasad/Selling/Capture/25-0924 Laowa9mm-0051 (X2D II 100C, Unknown).3FR"

That error is coming from Exiftool, which doesn't support writing into .3fr files.  Reading the release notes, Exiftool's author Phil Harvey is pretty scathing about Hasselblad's firmware programmers:

https://exiftool.org/ancient_history.html 

"Patched FFF reader to be more tolerant of the mess made by incompetent Hasselblad programmers (wrong IFD count for some values)"

Lenstagger should do a better job of surfacing such errors to the user.

By @johnrellis

John, this is just priceless!