Lightroom not reading correct data for Lens and Camera Serial Number

Question

Hi you all.
Recently got Lightroom, and I'm so impressed - I never imagined image organizing and adjustment could be this easy and at the same time very advanced.
I have a problem, however. Lightroom (and Adobe Bridge, too) does not correctly read the EXIF data of Lens type and Camera Serial Number.
The first ~50 images I took and imported turned out correctly and displayed my serial number and lens (18-55 mm Canon) inside Lightroom.
But now, whenever I import photos into Lightroom or view them with Bridge, they all display "Unknown Lens" and "Unknown Camera Serial Number".
At first I thought that maybe the camera didn't correctly record this data on to the photos anymore for some reason, but a comparison using EXIFToolGUI shows that the metadata is EXACTLY the same as in the photos that display this info in Lightroom correctly.
I have not done any changes to either my camera (Canon EOS-350D / Digitial Rebel XT) or lens (the kit lens, 18-55 mm Canon).
It seems that for some reason, Lightroom has stopped reading these two fields of metadata - all the other fields, such as aperture and shutter speed, all display correctly.
I also tried to reimport the photos into Lightroom, but it didn't help. Neither did "Synchronize Folder" -> "Scan for metadata updates".
What should I do? I'd like my lens information do display correctly, as I'll buy a new lens soon.
I have attached one of the photos that Lightroom doesn't read the data correctly from. Try importing it into your Lightroom, and see if how the info displays.
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Are these jpgs or RAW?  I have only edited metadata on jpgs.
It looks like Vista's import stripped out all the makernotes.  I didn't look at your file but that seems to be what happened.  Be warned, Photoshop CS2 also strips out makernotes!
Now how to fix the problem.  If you want to edit the metadata on files already loaded into LR, you need to write out your metadata to the files first, then edit the metadata, then read the new metadata into LR.  This is scarey for me, so I always make sure my backup is up to date on the images first.
What to do...  You probably can't put back all of the makernotes, so what to do to get the lens information in.  I don't know if putting back in the makernote LensType would trigger LR to reconsider its lens information.  I don't know.  If it had a real lens name, my guess would be no because it would have an XMP::Lens field which would override.  But maybe unknown lens doesn't have this field and it would re-read the makernotes.
The other solution is to forget about makernotes for these images and put the exact text you want into XMP::Lens.  I think that's the "easy" way.
In either case, you will have to become familiar with exiftoolGUI or exiftool itself.  I use the command line exiftool but it looks like you can edit multiple files with exiftoolGUI.  Select your files, click the edit thingy (^) under XMP, choose various, and there is lens.  Put in the text you want.
I would do this with one file first.  If the lens shows up after you read the new metadata into LR, you know you have it right.
Note, exiftool can write backup files for each file.  This makes too much of a mess for me.  I prefer to copy the directory first (I have copies anyway, I just have to make sure the backups are up to date).
Good luck!  I'm struggling with a similar situation where the same lens used by two different cameras is coming out with a different name.  I need to go back and "fix" the names in the images already imported, and then develop my procedure for setting a single unique name before I load new images into LR.  Not too much of a problem because I'm loading in GPS information anyway...  What's another call to exiftool...
Judy