The Next Lens
Well, Gina and I are looking at a big trip this Spring (more on that later…), and I’m seriously considering a new lens. I’ll be shooting with my new Canon 40D and will be shooting mostly landscapes. That means I’ll want a wide lens. Fast would be nice, too. But most of all I want a sharp lens that will cover my most used focal lengths.
What focal lengths do I use most? Yup, you guessed it I wrote an AppleScript:
Focal Length Analysis v4 01.scpt.zip
This AppleScript traverses the selected images in Aperture and calculates the 1.6x DSL equivalent focal length. The property p_lensConversion contains an array of arrays that contain a match string and a conversion multiplier.
Easy, right? When it is done, you can plug the results into this Numbers spreadsheet and see what you shoot…
FocLenUse-dist.numbers.zip
Here is what I learned:
Naturally, my current shots are limited by my existing lenses, but 17 & 18mm are very popular focal lengths for me. Ironically, my existing Canon EF-S 17-85mm IS USM lens provides me excellent coverage for what I’m likely to shoot.
Interesting… I still do need a fast lens…
This post has 3 comments
February 5th, 2008
Hi,
very interesting topic. I have been wondering how I should go about getting such a statistic for my shots. The script you wrote … how does one plug that into Aperture? I have been using Macs for quite a while, but obviously leaving out lots of the fun.
What do the percentages in your table mean? They add up to much more than 100%. I am missing something, here.
Regards,
Achim
February 9th, 2008
Thanks for your comments Achim!
I would recommend running the script from the Script Menu (see my post at). The script analyzes the currently selected images and will work best/easiest if you are analyzing DSLR images. It will do some focal length conversion for some point & shoot cameras, but only those that I have owned 
You can edit the P&S camera support by opening the AppleScript in Script Editor and adding the camera’s name (as Aperture shows it) and adding the conversion number.
The percentages show how many of the selected images a particular lens would have been usable for. The lens with the highest percentage would be the most useful for what you shoot.
Thanks!
July 9th, 2008
Hi,
As much as I would love this script to help me decide on my new lens purchases, I can’t get it to work.
When I run the script nothing seems to happen…
Is this because I have an Older/Newer version of Aperture? (2.1/3C27 under About Aperture)?
If you could help me I would appreciate this very much. Other very simple scripts from other sites do work, so I know I’m invoking it in the right way.
Thanks, Alex