Originally posted by steephill ExifTool is unique in publishing their interpretation of the Pentax MakerNotes* to allow a key of sorts into the data stored there and the ExifTool developers' best guesses as to what they represent. Amazingly, the lens list is kept up-to-date and even includes recent non-AF product with K
AF2-style mounts offered by Irix.
Implementation of this thread's product suggestion would require the camera body to have a lookup table similar to that packaged into ExifTool to write friendly names into the standard EXIF. It should be noted that manufacturer support for the LensInfo and LensType tags is mixed. For example, Nikon does as Pentax, while Canon fills those fields. Whether Canon supports 3rd-party lenses is unknown, at least to me.
Steve
* MakerNotes is a free-form space with no standard mappings of location or purposes.