Need help searching photos by exif data

Software
1

I am trying to find an easy way, with a GUI, to find all photos, for instance, shot with a certain lens, or at a specific shutter speed, or some other info that is available in the file exif.

Naturally, I turned to Digikam, and while it is able to do this if I only specify the lens model, I think am am missing something, because it seems to go crazy every time I tell it to look in a specific folder and show me photos shot with a certain lens. It will then tell me there are no files matching that query. Odd!

I also gave Shotwell a try but it doesn’t seem to be able to search by camera model, or lens model…

2

Not on my computer now so I can’t recite details but you can use exiftool or exiv2 to create a detailed list. Whether grepped in-situ or turned into a text file (or csv) you can essentially create a full database of all your images’ metadata. Then just browse / search as needed.

Also, I don’t think it’s recursive but, e.g., ART’s file browser can filter by metadata tags.

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3

hi, did you try Ansel?

image

4

digiKam works for me. I thought I was able to reproduce the issue, but only because I accidentally selected the wrong folder at first (one that didn’t have pictures shot with the lens I was searching for). Once I chose the right folder the files I expected to see were shown. I even went further and added aperture settings to the search and it worked as expected. I’m using version 8.1.0 in case that’s relevant.

5

It appears it is not able to search recursively?

I have a folder structure like this Fuji Jpegs/2023/2023-09/2023-09-01 and if I search in the root forlder of Fuji Jpegs nothing comes up, but if I choose the folder with pictures in it, like, say 2023-09-01, results will appear.

Can I make it search recursively?

6

I don’t think there’s an option to search recursively, but you can select all subfolders using the right-click context menu on the root folder:
image
Maybe that will work for you?

7

I have no idea if this is of any help, but below is a simple bash script I wrote to extract various tags and send them to STDOUT in CSV format. As with anything I’ve written I’m sure it can be vastly improved and certainly, it was a quick hack even by my low standards (not to mention since retirement from IT I’m way out of practice / memory). And these days I’m on Windows, so this was run from WSL.

But it works …or at least, worked for me. :slight_smile:

It just does a recursive find from the current directory, feeds all files found with the extension matching $infileext and outputs the values of the EXIF tags inside the do loop. Redirect that to a file then import into a spreadsheet and Bob’s yer uncle.

Per the usage prompt it uses exiv2 so that needs to be on your $PATH. If you’re not shooting Canon (*.CR2 / *.CR3) you’ll need to edit the value of $infileext to match your raw file extension(s). Also, you can edit / add / delete the tags in the do loop to match what you want to retrieve.

I guess if you get it really tweaked to your satisfaction, make a cron job and run it nightly against a directory above all your images, so you’ll always have a current database. It’s trivial to create a data / time based file name so you’ll have unique versions.

Disclaimer - I’m no expert at exiv2 nor metadata in general. I just poked around long enough to get what I needed.

Usage

$ cd /photos
$ /scriptdir/mkimgcsv.sh > images.csv

Here’s how a sample run looks in LibreOffice Calc:

image
image1072×527 65.5 KB

Script

#!/usr/bin/bash

# It emits CSV with basic image info for each raw file found in the folder and below.
#
# View the tags available with `exiv2 -pt IMAGE.CR3`

scriptname=$(basename $0)
infileext="CR(2|3)"
indir="."
noheadopt="--noheader"
fieldstartchar=61
header="\"Filename\",\"Filepath\",\"Timestamp\",\"Lens\",\"Focal length\",\"Aperture\",\"ISO\",\"Shutter speed\",\"AEC\",\"Mode\""

if [ "$1" == "--help" ]
then
    echo ""
    echo "Invokes exiv2 against all *.${infileext} files in the current directory and below,"
    echo "printing CSV output of EXIF info to stdout. '$noheadopt' (optional) suppresses"
    echo "the header line. exiv2 must be installed and on the path. You must have r-x"
    echo "access to the specified directory and r-- to the files in it."
    echo ""
    echo "usage: $scriptname [ --noheader | --help ]"
    echo ""
    
    exit
fi

if [ "$1" != "$noheadopt" ]
then
    echo "$header"
fi

find "$indir" | egrep "${infileext}$" | while read infile 
do
    rawfname=$(echo "$infile" | awk -F/ '{print $NF}')

    # EXIF tags 
    tstamp=$(exiv2 -q -K Exif.Image.DateTime $infile | cut -c ${fieldstartchar}-)
    lens=$(exiv2 -q -K Exif.CanonCs.LensType $infile | cut -c ${fieldstartchar}- | tr -d '/')
    flen=$(exiv2 -q -K Exif.Photo.FocalLength $infile | cut -c ${fieldstartchar}-)
    fnum=$(exiv2 -q -K Exif.Photo.FNumber $infile | cut -c ${fieldstartchar}-)
    ISO=$(exiv2 -q -K Exif.Photo.ISOSpeedRatings $infile | cut -c ${fieldstartchar}-)
    exptime=$(exiv2 -q -K Exif.Photo.ExposureTime $infile | cut -c ${fieldstartchar}-)
    expbias=$(exiv2 -q -K Exif.Photo.ExposureBiasValue $infile | cut -c ${fieldstartchar}-)
    expprog=$(exiv2 -q -K Exif.Photo.ExposureProgram $infile | cut -c ${fieldstartchar}-)
     
    outstr="\"${rawfname}\",\"${infile}\",\"${tstamp}\",\"${lens}\",\"${flen}\",\"${fnum}\",${ISO},\"${exptime}\",\"${expbias}\",\"${expprog}\""
     
    echo "$outstr"
done
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