Help please - Software for printing metadata

[ru32day]

Sorry to keep asking for your help - hopefully one day I'll be able to give something back!

I've been trying to create my own reference manual of shots as I experiment with the D70s various options. Rather than note down all the settings, I want to rely on the metadata stored by the camera. I then want to print, say four shots to a page, with all of the metadata or most of the metadata plus some comment to make up for the data that's missing. Of course, the issue is with the Nikon camera maker notes EXIF info.

I've tried out heaps of programs - Photoshop Elements 3, Photoshop CS, Nikon Capture and Picture Project, Ulead Photo Explorer 8, ACDSee 7, Breeze Browser, iMatch, cam2PC are just those I can remember. Most of these can print some of the metadata, but they either choose subsets of the data which can't be changed (Nikon), or don't allow recognize Nikon's camera maker notes at all.

ACDSee theoretically allows access to Nikon camera maker notes, but I can't get it to show the EXIF properties display and if I choose to print these fields, they always come up blank. Annoyingly, I've just discovered that this feature works perfectly with Canon camera maker notes (yes I confess, we did own a Canon digital point and shoot before our D70).

None of the programs seems to let me supplement chosen exif info with typed notes, since none of them seems to print any comment field (eg IPTC - is that the right way around?) along with EXIF data.

Can anyone recommend a solution that won't take me months of scripting or cost an arm and a leg (say more than $100)? I just can't believe that it would be easier to type it all manually in text blocks, but with all the time I've spent testing possible solutions, this is the point I'm reaching

[ru32day]

Have been spending more time on this project. iMatch will capture pretty much all of the maker notes, except I can't find the code for AF Focus position (which cPicture will show but I don't think it will print). Under most circumstances you wouldn't want this anyway - in my case, it would help when reviewing the test shots, to see if this contributed to a particularly good or bad outcome.

The remaining problem with this solution is that iMatch pretty much requires a degree to operate - there's lots of code typing and manual searching - eg if you want to use it to categorize your shots, it's a pretty complex affair to set up the categories and assign them, and you can only assign IPTC keywords and categories within the IPTC editor, not through ticking boxes or dragging and dropping.

If anyone finds a better solution, please let me know - I haven't given up yet!