Comments on: Canon 40D + Lightroom Auto-Rotate

By: Correz

Correz — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 03:53:14 +0000

I have exactly the same issue with a Canon IXUS80Is and Adobe Lightroom 2.2 on two different WXPSP3 machines just in preview. Fortunately when the photos are actually downloaded into LR they appear correctly oriented.

By: mgbolts

mgbolts — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 19:13:38 +0000

I have been testing this issue when tethered. It appears to be resolved by turning off the rotate option in EOS Utility. I am running LR1.4 and 1.0.8.

By: Roman Tarnavski

Roman Tarnavski — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 01:49:07 +0000

Clint,

Thank you for the info – didn’t realise that the 40D could be so flawed as to not actually record the info sometimes.

Perhaps its a physical flaw in the design – or one that can be fixed by firmware.

Come 1.0.5!

By: Clint St.Laurent

Clint St.Laurent — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 01:41:44 +0000

PS – Its also worth noting that the 40D doesn’t recognize the difference between rightside up and upside down. Under both conditions it records an orientation EXIF of “1″ meaning “Top, Left” or ‘no rotation’

By: Clint St.Laurent

Clint St.Laurent — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 01:12:41 +0000

Orientation is stored in the JPG EXIF as references to where Row 0 and Column 0 begin.
Top, Left = 0 degrees of rotation
Bottom, Right = 180
Left, Bottom = 90 CW
Right, Top = 170 CW
“0″ = No orientation recorded to the JPG

I’m writting software that involves auto-rotating.
While investigating the Canon 40D I have seen the following:
With Auto Rotate turned off from the menu all photos regardless of shooting orientation have an EXIF orientation value of 0.
The JPG EXIF header does not include orientation information. Therefore any program trying to auto-rotate (Lightroom, Windows, Aperture) has no information to work with. I have to say I’m really stunned at this. If the camera has the orientation data, why not write it to the JPG regardless of how you choose to display the photo on screen? I don’t know what Canon was thinking with this.

With Auto Rotate turned on for both Camera and Computer the orientation field contains all the right values.

So… It behooves you to keep the “Auto Rotate” turned on while shooting if you want to be able to [later] detect the original orientation.

By: Roman Tarnavski

Roman Tarnavski — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 12:19:19 +0000

Clint – my experience with the 40D and Auto-rotate dilemma was with Lightroom 1.2 from memory.

Perhaps if you’re not already up to 1.3.1 – give it a go, and see if you can reproduce the problem.

I must admit – I always File -> Import Photos from Disk, so perhaps it is a bug that’s persistent only when you import from device.

I’ll do an import next time from device and see how I go.

Cheers,

By: Clint

Clint — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 14:15:17 +0000

I also have an issue with my new 40d i purchased a few days ago and Lightroom. when connecting the camera directly to the computer and trying to import from device with Lightroom the images are very bad quality and mirror upside down rather than rotated 180 degrees. if i view the photos in explorer as mentioned they are all the same orientation, unrotated. but i believe this is normal, as with the 40D i believe it saves the orientation to the photo and does not physically rotate the image like my 300D did. when i turned on image rotation in my 300D the photos saved on the card by the camera were already rotated, where as the 40D saves orientation and leaves it up to the computer software to rotate the image. if i import photos from the camera using the windows photo and video import the photos are rotated as necessary.

I am not sure that the problem is with the 40D for the way my preview photos in Lightroom are mirror upside down, as i have seen this before, if i go to import from device there was 2 options, from the card reader and from G:\ which both are the same thing just listed twice for some reason. but if i click on card reader the images were bad quality and mirror upside down like i am seeing now with my 40D. going to import from directory and selecting the photos on the card reader worked fine, as well as selecting g:\ as the device.

if i go to import from directory and select the 40D > CF > dcim > 100canon> it then says the search returned no results.

i believe the problem lies in Lightroom.