Metadata will be most useful when it has become trivial to collect and, therefore, becomes ubiquitous. Logically, this should happen right from the start of the acquisition process - at the lens. The tools have been there for more than a decade, however even now there are vast quantities of valuable information that could be obtained during acquisition but aren't. This metadata can save significant time and money during production and post production, but only a small percentage of productions take advantage of this. This paper seeks to address the development of /i Technology, a semi-open metadata protocol developed by Cooke Optics that is made available to the industry in an effort to create a standard protocol for gathering and sharing lens data. It will also look at the barriers to adoption and implementation, and efforts to achieve greater standardisation.