P: Display FEC (Flash Exposure Compensation) from the image EXIF data

[strange_quark]

Lightroom: Display the FEC setting (Flash Exposure Compensation) from the image EXIF data in the Library, Metadata right-side-panel. Sadly, Lightroom 4 still lacks this simple convenience. Basic 10 year-old tools can display this and more, so it's a shame to have to resort to using a plug-in, or going outside Lightroom to determine this critical image setting.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

This field is not part of the EXIF specification (if you can even call it a specification), as far as I can tell. My guess is that /some/ manufacturers put this in /some/ part of the metadata, possibly in one of the proprietary makernotes section(s).

Adobe scans the makernotes for some metadata, but usually only for metadata it really, really needs.

It's too brittle to depend on this information being there at all, generally.

[JohnRolfeEllis]

To build on John's comments: To see which metadata values are in the industry-standard sections and which in the manufacturers' proprietary Makernotes, refer to the Exiftool documentation:

http://owl.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exift...

For example, Canon has a field FlashExposureComp, Nikon has FlashExposureComp and ExternalFlashExposureComp, Panasonic has FlashBias, Sony has FlashExposureComp and FlashLevel.

The ExifMeta plugin will import pretty much any metadata field into the LR catalog, making it available for display and searching.

[strange_quark]

Thank you for the excellent pointer, I will have to explore the ExifMeta plugin option once the LR4 SDK is out and the plugin is deemed stable for LR4 catalog databases.

It looks to be an excellent extension. Too bad Adobe does not deem this functionality to be important enough for a product targeted and vaunted to be as much an image catalog organization platform as an image manipulation product. Proprietary EXIF makernotes are likely no more brittle than proprietary raw image formats, and there are no apparent problems supporting the latter. Perhaps this is a naive assumption.

In any case, I do love Lightroom, and definitely appreciate both your and John Verne's comments. Many thanks for the feedback.