DxO installed an incorrect lens profile, and shows false EXIF data

TomDX · January 28, 2023, 10:05am

DxO does not read/display metadata correctly.

After DxO took several minutes to scan a folder with 391 photos [still very slow], it started downloading the profile for the Panasonic 25/1.7 lens, which I do not even own. Instead, I own a Yongnuo 25/1.7 with a very different optical design, its own firmware and EXIF data identifier.

According to DxO, the file’s EXIF says I shot all these photos with a lens I do not own, have never used, or have ANY files in my computer with metadata from that lens.

Here is IrfanView, showing the actual metadata that’s baked in the raw file from my E-M1 III:

Of all the things I’ve complained about, this is the most telling of simple lack of care from the devs.
It’s metadata, it’s right there, no need for a complex algorithm, you just need to read it, and display it - hell, grab the code from ExifTool if it’s so hard. Why does this expensive program reads the metadata, and proceeds to download a profile for another lens, and display false information?! Metadata completely fabricated by DxO!

It’s not even a catastrophic bug, it’s just simply absurd.

So DxO, why don’t you add the real lens profile to your database? That way PhotoLab 6 Elite, “The most advanced, end-to-end, RAW photo editing software” doesn’t have to come up with another lens profile to download and display false information. By the way, the database is missing many lenses, new and old. Yongnuo, Yi, Meike, TTArtisan, 7Artisans, Rokinon, IRIX, Laowa, Pergear, Voigtländer. Remember Yongnuo, the one at the top of your DxO scores with their 85mm lens?

And why can’t we manually choose the proper lens, since PL6 can’t do it right?

Okay, so that’s off my chest and into the forum, hoping this one won’t be ignored by the devs for 4~5 years like the other threads.

BHAYT · January 28, 2023, 11:14am

@TomDX I cannot comment on the situation in which you find yourself because I am happy to say that I have not experienced this myself but the comment about user choice I fully agree with.

JoJu · January 28, 2023, 11:16am

I also have some lenses which are “confused” with other lenses. I get what you mean.

But think about: Where is the source of false information based? A couple of my lenses changed their lens name just by getting a fw-update. And if Yongnuo “steals” the lens description of Lumix because they know this description is somehow working, it’s nothing else than you, putting a false name on your door bell, right? There’s simply no reliable standard for all lens manufacturers to name their items. Which is not different from motorcycle or car producers, in all industries there are standards and company standards.

And about lack of care of devs – was also my impression, but let’s think again: As devs of a RAW converter they have not even access to all various (and frequently changing) lens description papers of all manufacturers, not to mention the insider knowledge of how to interprete and how to know a lens manufacturer obeyed a given EXIF entry and is filling it accordingly with data or makes a new EXIF entry, like Nikon did with their custom entries:

There’s a lens entry, a lens type and a lens ID, also a manufacturer entry. Sigma doesn’t always put their name into their ID entry, and your 25/1.7 µ 4/3 is not the only one on the market.

We can blame DxO for not taking care of all possible entries, but what if one manufacturer uses a different, contradictory system to another manufacturer?

JoJu · January 28, 2023, 11:31am

Yep, that would also be my suggestion for a solution of that non-standard EXIF mess, created by manufacturers. And also release the stress of the back of Marie and her colleagues (if she’s not the only one profiling the lenses). They can still produce high(er) quality lens profiles, but the problem doesn’t start at DxO, it’s the lens manufacturers who want to save money for getting some % less distortion out of their products.

TRWhite · January 28, 2023, 2:53pm

Having the same problem. I am using a Tamron 150-600 G2 lens, and DxO keeps assigning the Sigma 150-600 lens

JoJu · January 28, 2023, 3:15pm

Cool down, @AttaBoy: If a lens manufacturer relies massively on software- instead of proper optical correction, the problem still starts with the lens manufacturer and the format of the sw corrections and how well they are documented. Get it or leave it, other apps also have problems with the inbuilt profiles, it’s not DxO alone. But DxO is the worst when it comes to open up for manufacturer profiles.

Because I wanted to give an example that EXIF is in no way a reliable standard in which a lens is always an only defined by the same tags. And I don’t own any µ 4/3 camera. You really believe µ 4/3 is an exception? Cool, then prove it! Just rest assured I will crawl through some RAW suspects on DPR and prove you wrong.

platypus · January 28, 2023, 3:56pm

Exiftool reports all kind of lens information and it’s not always consistent. Check out lens information on Phil Harvey’s pages and find how lens info is stored.

When I put a new Canon lens on an old Canon body, DPL does stumble…and the issue has increased by the revised way of checking metadata that has been introduced in the recent updates of DPL5 and 6. Getting it right for the close to 100k combinations of lenses and cameras supported by DxO seems difficult to say the least. I can understand a developer’s ambition to achieve 100% correct detection, but from an effort (and commercial) point of view, the reasonable thing would be to enable the user to select the camera and lens models themselves, specially considering the expressed wishes for exactly that feature.

Then again, people will be foolish enough to select crappy combos and will consequentially complain about bad results.

The question remains: What is worse? People complaining because they have no choice or people complaining about having made the wrong choices?

JoJu · January 28, 2023, 8:12pm

@AttaBoy for me it’s hard to tell if you’re playing simple minded or if you are. But you clearly confuse me with somebody who

cares about the future of DxO PhotoLab - I went a different path a while ago after realizing DxO is neither listening nor gives a dam about lens manufacturer’s profiles.
cares about your complaints or you’re having some difficulties to understand I’m not supporting Nikon’s, Canon’s, DxO’s or whoever’s strategies when they try to get customers into their proprietary prisons.
cares about people saving some bucks with buying copycat lenses and then whining around because that shard appears to be not supported by their favourite RAW converter and go immediately into “me against DxO, probably I’m not using it anymore, fear me!” threatening mode. Incredibly boring, that is.

Canon and Nikon saw Sony passing by their old number one and two chart places on the camera market because Sony opened up their mount for every company willing to pay a bit license fee. Sony didn’t even have to refuse delivering sensors to them. And that was their chance to become a great player in the camera market. That and that they didn’t waste time with outdated mirrors. Sony attacked its competitors on a field they just didn’t have had on their own maps.
DxO is a rather insignificant company which might go the Pentax way. Or not, but I was never forced by DxO to use their app, there are other well (and better) made apps with other disadvantages.

BUT: No company can be forced to open up (their mounts, their lens profile module), to follow standards, to make lives easier for customers. And as long as people like you pay the update fees, they are apparently on the right way. Did you ever see somebody of DxO posting here some sort of statement why they don’t integrate a choice for their’s or manufacturer lens profiles?

Seriously, I don’t care anymore, that moment passed last year.

No, I don’t play a game. If a manufacturer decides to not go the last mile and develop a lens as close to optical perfection as possible and instead of that (questionable goal, as there’s no optical perfection for lenses) choose to let software do the trick, I see it as his responsibility to deliver that firmware. And my responsibility to choose a RAW converter able to read that profile.

It should not be laid on the shoulders of customers of a RAW converter company, but then DxO is pretending that only their profiles – financed by all customers, even me included – are the right way to deal with lens imperfections. Stupidity everywhere.

And you, how’s your Canon printer working with Epson, HP or Yongnuo cartridges? I mean, how blind can you be to not see that camera and lens manufacturers are not the only companies trying to play the proprietary game? A long as customers buy that stuff or are ok with this strategy, you can complain as long as you like, or howling at the moon. Outcome will be the same.

As a side note, the µ 4/3 manufactures were the first relying massively on lens corrections by software as there’s a limit to miniaturization for lenses. These days smartphones stepped in to need even more corrections, it became something super normal so I have no compassion for their whining around.

uncoy · January 29, 2023, 5:33pm

Wow, this is an interesting thread. An argument between someone who dislikes DxO (thread starter), someone who hates DxO (above), just here to troll and stir up trouble, and finally someone who has contempt for both DxO and polite forum etiquette.

As a long time user of Photolab who likes the program, here’s the deal:

It’s possible and easy to refuse a lens suggestion. It’s also possible to change a lens designation later (although that’s a bit more difficult, in the worst case delete the lens profile from your hard drive forcing DxO to ask again).

There’s lots of lenses which are confused as there’s limited EXIF information. DxO is counting on you not to agree to a lens assignment which is wrong. If you can’t do that, then you are not mature enough to use grown-up creative software.

That said I very much agree that DxO should allow photographers to assign lens profiles to images for creative purposes and to help those of us who like to shoot with vintage glass create sharper images.

TomDX · January 30, 2023, 1:36am

Ah but you see, you got it all wrong mate… The source if false information is coming from DxO Photolab. To get the proper information it only needs to read the EXIF data, not rely on triangulating data with their lens database.

Yongnuo did not steal the lens description - it’s a very different design to Panasonic’s lens [I’d argue it has even a better design and performance, but not the point here]. It doesn’t matter if you update a lens firmware, it doesn’t matter if it’s an obscure lens… as long as the EXIF says: “Lens ID: JoJu 27mm f/1.8”, all the program has to do is read it, and display “JoJu 27mm f/1.8” in the Metadata section.
It then wants to download a profile? Sure, go ahead. It doesn’t match your database? OK, don’t, but keep displaying “Lens: JoJu 27mm f/1.8”, end of story. But nooo, DxO PL is saying oh… ok, let me se… 27mm… well it’s obviously the Fujifilm 27mm. Yeah, I’ll display that, and while we’re at it let’s automatically download this incorrect profile and also automatically apply “corrections” to the photo. Corrections that will, of course, be bad because it’s not correcting for the flaws in the JoJu lens, but correcting for ANOTHER completely different lens. And all based solely on a decision made by DxO software.

To your second point, no, the devs don’t need access to changes in lens descriptions, etc… they only need to READ the already present metadata in the photo and not alter it, simple as that. The lens ID may be there, but in the EXIF data the lens name and description are fiels in plain text.
Marie and dev team can do all they want with their lens profile database, no stress to them. That has nothing to do with reading an EXIF tag, ignoring it, and then displaying something different - that’s on DxO PL6.

TomDX · January 30, 2023, 1:39am

Exactly this - I don’t know why JoJu is all defensive and blaming this issue on lens manufacturers, camera+lens combinations, lens firmware updates…

TomDX · January 30, 2023, 1:54am

So let me break it down for you:
Thread starter - that’s moi - dislikes DxO’s careless dev team and DxO’s misleading marketing - I like the software and if I didn’t care, I wouldn’t be voicing my concerns.

The trolls are those who a) don’t care about DxO, b) are gaslighting the raised issue while blaming completely unrelated “causes”, and c) those who say “but you can jump through hoops and fix it yourself”. Of course I can, and I can also just not use DxO, but that doesn’t fix the problem, does it? Not for all users, and certainly not for all future instances. I can put a band-aid, but I would also like the owner of the park to remove the rusty nail that’s sticking out from the floor.

Some important bits:

DxO PL6 is not counting [and should not count] on user input to READ AND DISPLAY THE METADATA.
DxO PL6 has the option to automatically download and install lens profiles. If it’s there, it means they are NOT relying on user input. As it should be. If they were, they would allow manual lens selection. Which they don’t. Because they don’t care about users.
If you cannot see that a developer is at fault, you are a conformist fanboy happy to stay with the status quo, and agree to give your money away despite things not working as advertised.
If you can’t understand that corporations can make mistakes, and when they do they should fix them, then you’re not mature enough to be posting on a grown-up forum specifically designed for users to raise and issue and complain about the bugs that the creative software program has.

JUH · January 30, 2023, 8:15am

Deselect “Enable automatic DxO Modules download” in DxO Optics Modules:
When deselected, then DxO shows a list of possible modules and requires your confirmation.

TomDX · January 30, 2023, 8:20am

Thanks for the workaround - I purposely enabled the automatic module download, trusting DxO. Learned my lesson not to trust DxO.

platypus · January 30, 2023, 10:30am

This worked up to a certain point, but the current releases of DPL5 and DPL6 have changed that.
They no longer offer to select the module in case of lens ambiguities:

Left: DPL4 offers module selection.
Right: DPL6 does NOT offer module selection.

Looks like the logic behind presenting the modules has changed from “OR” to “AND”

George · January 30, 2023, 5:25pm

I searched in one of my pictures for the lens id. Exiftool gave me “AF-S DX VR ZOOM-NIKKOR 18-200MM F/3.5-5.6G IF-ED [II]”
I couldn’t find this string searching with Notepad++.
If the [II] means version II, than that’s wrong. It was version I.
Where did Exiftool get that lens id from?

George

KeithRJ · January 31, 2023, 1:27am

This information normally comes from the Maker Notes which, as far as I know, sometimes are encoded/encrypted and Exiftool decodes them.

George · January 31, 2023, 6:47am

I was looking for that list but I can’t find it. I think it’s baked in the exif file.
Assuming lensidnumber is the basic of the lensinfo or the name . It’s a number.

George

JoJu · February 1, 2023, 11:32am

That is the very big question. Some of my lenses got one or more firmware updates. I observed afterwards that although I didn’t buy a second version of the lens, RAW converters like DxO or C1 or… and also helpers like Statistica or Excire suddenly showed two “same” lenses registered in the list of lenses. Checking the EXIF for the serial number, it turnt out it’s still the same lens but the manufacturer changed it’s description tag in the EXIF.

Sure, RAW converter manufacturers “should be able to deal with it”, but didn’t you sometimes also notice slight differences in the firmware’s name pattern? If the firmware’s doing what it should - who cares. But if a database is relying on the name to identify something - different story. So, I think you did get it wrong because you haven’t seen enough EXIF data to understand the different manufacturer’s naming schemes.

What I also noticed was: DxO PL confused a Sigma contemporary lens 35/2 with a Leica Apo Sumicron 35/2 - that I do blame DxO for, especially since DxO is displaying the correct manufacturer, just uses the wrong profile.

I think, the source of confusion issues is that each lens manufacturer apparently decides to alter the pattern of description inside the whole palet of lenses, but also inside the firmware versions of a single lens type. Maybe to correct the “wrong scheme” before, maybe the “new description” happened by accident because the creator of the firmware didn’t know about the naming scheme - new guy, you know?

Some manufacturers put the aperture size in front of the focal length, others use a different way:

F2.0 / 35 mm or 35 mm F2.0 or 35/2 (which would be correct imo) or 35 mm f/2.0. Plus tons of other abbreviations. Naming without a clear concept and changing that unclear concept from time to time ist a nightmare for anybody in need for that names - be it resellers or RAW converter companies. Each lens company has it’s own scheme - how could DxO software “Decide” what to show? There’s a naming query in PL and if a lens triggers the right tags, it searches in a database and if there’s a match, display and apply the possibly wrong profile.

Again, there’s no standard in the so called standard EXIF. Also, not the lens writes EXIF data into the RAW - that’s done by the camera body. And if a camera manufacturer likes to sabotage 3rd party lenses, that’s one way to do it.

But hey, keep on believing it’s DxO’s (or another converter’s) fault - I’m just wondering, if there are so many different possibilities to mess up with a lens ID and a simple fw-update already gets in the way, then how much more things can go wrong with manufacturer’s own profile? What I also can see when comparing C1’s profile to the manufacturer profile which is at least possible in C1: Their profiles are also flawed.

George · February 1, 2023, 3:33pm

Does the manufacturer write a discription in the exif?. I’m still not sure about that. They use a lensidnumber.

George