I discovered a very cool plugin for Lightroom from Lightroom Analytics that takes your metadata and gives you all types of cool graphs. It involves installing a plugin into Lightroom to export the meta data for the selected images. You then open up a HMTL page and drag the exported data into the finder, and you are all done with a lot of graphs.
I recently acquired a full frame Nikon D800 and was wondering what lens I should buy. To see what I have been using, in Lightroom I used the filter to see all of the thousands of images taken with the D300 and exported the metadata using this plugin. Then I dragged the produced file into their webpage and it produced all types of graphs, including the above one.
I then looked at one of the other graphs it produced to see what focal lengths I actually used and I saw this graph, that reported them in actual focal length and also equivalent full frame. Click the images to see enlarged.
From these charts I see that I like to shoot very wide, from the widest I had (18 mm for 35 mm equivalent) up to about 100 mm. There were several items in the telephoto range, mostly at 300 mm, but not as many as very wide. From this I decided to get a mid range zoom and an ultra wide zoom .
Next I looked at what apertures I was using and what shutter speeds. The program produced these charts.
Most of the time I was stopped down to 5.6 or smaller so spending the extra money and weight penalty to get the f2.8 pro lenses maybe was not needed. I opted for the level between the pro and consumer and purchased the Nikon 16-35 mm f4 and the Nikon 24-120 mm f4.
By using the metadata from my past photography I can better understand what type of equipment will best serve me when switching to the full frame format camera.
To cover the longer reach, I brought of our retirement my 200 mm f4 prime lens and will give that a try. With 36 megapixels on the Nikon D800, you can easily crop if you need to get more reach.
There are many other graphs such as which camera body you are using the most (including smartphones), focal lengths, exposures, exposure bias, as well as details for each of the lenses. Check it out.