Eye-Fi's geotagging strips Lens data from my Pentax images

[tempolo]

When the Geotagging feature is enabled, the images transferred by the Eye-Fi Center lose some of their EXIF data.
I can easily see that when I compare the original img on the memory card with the one downloaded by Eye-Fi Center (v3.4.24 OS X):

For instance, when I view both imgs in Preview, and then look at the Exif data in the "More Info" window, all these attributes are only shown in the original img on the card:

AFInfo: 0.345069, 0.6456802, 0.01278409, 0.01746324, n, 0.493608, 0.6456802, 0.01278409, 0.01746324, n, 0.6421469, 0.6456802, 0.01278409, 0.01746324, n, 0.1963271, 0.4736519, 0.01278409, 0.05269608, n, 0.345069, 0.4912684, 0.01278409, 0.01746324, n, 0.4908685, 0.4872856, 0.01826299, 0.02542892, F, 0.6421469, 0.4912684, 0.01278409, 0.01746324, n, 0.7908888, 0.4736519, 0.01278409, 0.05269608, n, 0.345069, 0.3368566, 0.01278409, 0.01746324, n, 0.493608, 0.3368566, 0.01278409, 0.01746324, n, 0.6421469, 0.3368566, 0.01278409, 0.01746324, n, 0.4908685, 0.4872856, 0.01826299, 0.02542892, n
Focus Mode: 1
ImageStabilization: 0
Lens ID: 2.263
Lens Model: smc PENTAX-DA 18-135mm F3.5-5.6 ED AL [IF] DC WR
PentaxModelID: 77.430
Serial Number: 7250

And when I use "Exiftool", which shows more details, I see that there's even much more info missing: The entire "Pentax" section, and the preview image as well. I don't care about the loss of the preview img, but the rest of the data mustn't be removed.

This looks like a serious bug to me - does someone know if this is known?

Without these infos, Aperture and Lightroom aren't able to apply lens corrections, which is a rather big limitation for my needs.

Attached are two versions of an image, original and geotaggged. I've also included the exiftool output.

[tempolo]

Does no one care? I'd like to know if I'm the only one seeing this, or at least get an acknowledgement from Eye-Fi, as this makes the Geotag feature quite useless for me, since I need both informations - geoloc _and_ lens info.

Has anyone else checked if the Lens information gets lost with their Camera? If so, please post your Camera type and file format (DNG, JPG etc.) here, and what the result is.

[jsun]

hi tempolo,

I haven't heard any reports of this issue myself, and didn't notice any in a quick search of our support database.

Please try having our server geotag your photos instead of Eye-Fi Helper. To make sure they are relayed through the server, enable Eye-Fi View in your card settings*, then quit Eye-Fi Helper (which should also close Eye-Fi Center).

Shoot an image or two and wait for them to transfer. You can verify their transfer status through our web site (center.eye.fi). Once they've arrived online, restart Eye-Fi Helper so they download to your Mac.

Now, compare the EXIF data. Is your metadata preserved? Hopefully it is - I tried this test with your original photo and the 'Pentax' section appeared to be intact. You can also download the photo from the web site and compare that as well.

I'm afraid I don't know exactly why this is occurring, though it seems clear that our servers geotag images differently than Eye-Fi Helper.


* (if you have an older Eye-Fi card without Eye-Fi View, just enable Relayed Transfers in the Transfer Mode settings.)

[tempolo]

jsun,
I can confirm your findings:
When I do it via the "Relayed Transfers" (which takes quite a while, i.e. in the minutes, even though the jpg was just 258KB in size), the img ending up on my Mac has the geoloc info while also keeping the "MakerNotes" info.
With immediate transfer, the MakerNotes info gets lost.
I've verified this to happen on two Macs now, one running 10.6.8, the other 10.7.3, both with Helper v.3.4.26.

I noticed that the Helper app is using "libexif", whose release notes mention that they do not support all camera's maker's special infos. Though the note doesn't say what this means: Whether it just can't interpret all infos, or that it can't handle and therefore can't write them back. In any case, the "exiftool" by Phil Harvey doesn't suffer from this problem - when I use it to manually add geoloc data, it does it without loss of Exif data.

So maybe this is a problem with the 3rd party (open source) lib you're using. In any case, it's not a good state for me. Please have your engineers look into this.

[jsun]

Thanks for the update. I've passed the information on so our engineers can look into this.

In the meantime, as an experiment or temporary workaround you could try installing an older version of Eye-Fi Helper. I'll send you a PM.

[tempolo]

Jason,
Yes - I can confirm that the geotagging issue doesn't appear with v3.4.10.

I also see that the libexif library is identical in both versions. Which means it's probably not the culprit, but your own code. That should make it easier to track it down, I hope.

[KMK]

I seem to have a similar problem. But, I am primarily curious about the fact that images processed by Eye-Fi are smaller in size than the original. I would expect more data to be included in the file, not less. What kind of processing is done to the images by the Eye-fi software?

Would it be possible to enable XMP-files to be written for all kinds of files, not only RAW files? I would prefer not to have my image files touched. (Aperture would still be able to use the data, right?).

[thomas-em5]

Hi, I have the same problem, all the camera data is being stripped out from JPGs downloaded by Eye-Fi Helper, when it inserts the GPS information.
Helper version 3.4.25
Camera is an Olympus OM-D E-M5

The whole camera data section, lens info, serial numbers etc, is being replaced with one tag which says
"Warning : Bad EquipmentIFD directory"

Please will you send me a link to the older version of the Eye-Fi Helper.

[RyanA]

Sent you a PM for more information.

Thanks,
Ryan A.