Choosing A Camera Lense

Sometimes it's so hard to make a decision, even on a simple thing. Therefore I considered the metadata from old images to get an overview of my settings. The rate of focal length, exposure time and aperture values might help me to select a new lens which may fit my needs.

My Old Lens

Canon EF-S 17-85 mm f4-5.6 IS USM

The Candidates

Extract The Metadata

# FOCAL LENGTH
grep 'Focal length' | \
awk -F: '{print $2}' | \
sed -e 's/^\s//g' -e 's/\.0\smm.*//g' \
> focal_length.txt

# APERTURE
exiv2 pr */*.JPG 2&gt; /dev/null | \
grep 'Aperture' | \
grep -v 'Aperture priority' | \
awk -F: '{print $2}' | \
sed -e 's/^\sF//g' -e 's/\./,/g' \
> aperture.txt

# EXPOSURE TIME
exiv2 pr */*.JPG 2&gt; /dev/null | \
grep 'Exposure time' | \
awk -F: '{print $2}' | \
sed -e 's/^\s//g' -e 's/\ss.*//g' \
> exposuretime.txt

Generating The Charts

Import each file in Open / LibreOffice (specify the input data type).
Sort the imported column A.
Apply a distinct filter on column A and write it to B.
Sort B.
Compute the rate to column C based on A as data and B as categories (use a function).
Compute a column D with relative rates based on C (use a function).
Create a chart with column D as Y-values and column B as X-values.

Grab the source ods file to compare the values

The Metadata Charts

The Results

The focal length graph shows that

the 24-70mm lens would cover 59%
the 17-55mm lens 50%
the 24-105mm lens 90%
and the 50mm lens only 4% of my framing.

The exposure graph shows that the most of the pictures was taken in low light levels

46% by 1/8 - 1/50
21% by 1/60 - 1/125
18% by 1/160 - 1/400
8% by 1/500 - 1/8000.

The aperture graph shows that 75% of my pictures was taken with an aperture less or equal 5.6mm. Thats closely related to the exposure graph and the low light shots.

Well, the static evaluation would leftover the 24-70mm and the 24-105mm lens. It seems to me that I need to check more reviews. Your recommendations are welcome.