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Many people recommend a focal length of 35mm, 50mm, and sometimes even 85mm and upwards for those interested in purchasing a prime lens. I, however, would like to figure out what focal length(s) I use most often, and then purchase a prime with that approximate focal length.

Is there a piece of software that will analyze thousands of photos and then tell me how many times I used a certain focal length?

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1  
What operating system(s) are you using? – Rowland Shaw♦ Jan 19 '11 at 19:09
Windows 7, which does have some compatibility options – AskQuestionsLater Jan 19 '11 at 19:10
This question is substantially like photo.stackexchange.com/q/5311/1356 . – whuber Jan 19 '11 at 19:59
I think you're right - should they be merged? I'm sorry about the duplicate question, but I think the title of that question wasn't very clear. – AskQuestionsLater Jan 19 '11 at 20:05
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One thing to keep in mind: when I borrowed a friend's 24-70mm zoom for a while, my most frequently-used focal lengths were 24mm and 70mm. That doesn't mean that those were really the focal lengths I wanted most, just that for whatever reason I found it most natural to go to the zoom extremes. If I had shot for a while with a selection of zooms, I suspect that the data would be highly biased towards whatever focal lengths happened to be at the ends of those lenses' ranges. – mattdm Dec 30 '11 at 3:23
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3 Answers

up vote 16 down vote accepted

Someone referred me once to Exposure Plot. This is a free Windows utility which is very simple. It shows you graphs of different parameters, one of them being focal-length.

If you already use image management application like Lightroom or Bibble Pro, then you can also usually see that data in the filter interface.

For Lightroom for example, you need to activate the filter bar (/), select Metadata and change one of the columns to show Focal-Length. You'll get to see all the focal-lengths used and the number of photos taken at each focal-length. What's neat is that you can combine things like rating and focal-length, to find out which focal-length is used in your best images.

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This is exactly what I was looking for, thanks! – AskQuestionsLater Jan 19 '11 at 19:48
up vote 6 down vote

I believe ExifTool can be used to produce this kind of analysis, but it requires some technical command-line knowledge.

For example, see this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/code_martial/3280664879/

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Well, it's a start, but not quite as user-friendly as I had in mind. Thanks, though. – AskQuestionsLater Jan 19 '11 at 19:45
Itai's answer (exposure plot) looks much more user friendly, but I think it may be jpeg only? I may try both later. If I do, I can write up a short guide on how to get exiftool working. – rm999 Jan 19 '11 at 19:50
If you want to go the exiftool route, I have a script that may help; see reidster.net/software – Reid Jan 20 '11 at 1:34
up vote 3 down vote

For Lightroom users, Jeffrey Friedl's Data Plot plugin is great...
http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodies/data-plot

What's nice about that is being able to filter your photos in Lightroom, keepers, 5 star rated, certain lenses, whatever, then seeing the focal lengths for just those photos.

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