When I got my shiny, new Sony a7 IV in early January, I was excited. I knew I’d have a bunch of client work coming up over the winter — some in challenging situations. These challenges I was used to — having to remove noise, sharpen images, etc. due to lackluster lighting conditions outdoors at night.

But what I wasn’t ready for is the fact that the photos from my shiny new camera wouldn’t be supported by a few of my favorite plugins.

While the Sony a7 IV RAW files were supported by Lightroom Classic and Capture One just fine, they weren’t supported by others — like Topaz’s suite of plugins and DxO PureRAW, which I used for sharpening my images and removing noise. So what could I do?

ExifTool to the rescue

Usually I would just wait for my camera files to be supported, or “live with it.” But when it came to client work, I couldn’t do that. I talked with Brett, our gear editor at Photofocus. He recommended I check out ExifTool, a command-line application created by Phil Harvey for macOS (and an executable file for Windows).

While I had used Terminal for a few basic commands in the past, it was a little beyond me at some level. Luckily, I was able to figure out ExifTool’s commands pretty easily, and switch my a7 IV RAW files to be recognized as those from an a7 III camera.

I know what you’re saying. By changing the camera in the EXIF data of the files, I was changing what I could ultimately do with the files. The profile correction might be off. The automated fixes I would sometimes rely on when in a hurry wouldn’t be reliable.

But I decided to try it anyway. And it worked.

Why it works

In my case, it wasn’t like I was taking an Olympus RAW file and changing it to a Sony RAW file. I was keeping it in the same camera brand — heck, I was changing it to a previous generation version of the camera I was using. It couldn’t be more similar.

When your RAW files are read by software programs, it reads the embedded information in the file to obtain information about it. It can help get the optimal results of your files, as long as they’re supported.

If they aren’t supported by, say, Photoshop or Lightroom, you can use Adobe’s free DNG Converter tool to open the files to make adjustments. But it doesn’t change the file as a whole, and instead just converts it to a readable format by Adobe. Which works great for Photoshop and Lightroom, but not so much for Topaz or DxO PureRAW. Because they still see it as that newer camera make, regardless of the file format.

How to use ExifTool

While ExifTool lets you basically change anything embedded into your RAW file, I used it to just change the camera that was associated with the file. The best thing is that I could easily batch process my files.

It’s easy to get started. First, locate the folder your files are in. The right-click and select New Terminal at Folder.

This will open a Terminal window. If you’ve ever used any type of scripting language this should look at least somewhat familiar.

Once Terminal opens, type out the following, replacing OLDMODEL with the camera model you wish to switch to, and rawformat to the extension of your current files. In my case, I switched it to ILCE-7M3 for the model, and arw for the extension (and yes, capitalization of everything matters).

exiftool -m -model="OLDMODEL" *.rawformat

Then press Return to run the command. Here’s how the command looks in Terminal:

Depending on how many photos you need to switch camera models for, it might take a few minutes to complete. Once it has, a new line in the Terminal will appear, indicating that the process is finished.

The great thing here is that ExifTool doesn’t replace your original photos. Instead, it backs them up and then creates new files. So if you ever wanted to come back to the original file formats, you could.

Using Windows? The commands are similar, but you’ll want to check out the ExifTool website and scroll down to the Running ExifTool section. For Mac users wanting more commands, there’s a plethora of options here too.

While using ExifTool is anything but a long-term solution, it’s a great option if you’re in a pinch with a new camera.