when are canon likely to produce a gps enabled camera?

Have none of you seen that Microsoft Live Labs program called PhotoSynth?

 

If you can't see how an internet full of accurately geo-tagged images wouldn't be useful

when an application like PhotoSynth exists (or rather, will exist soon), then you have

terrible vision. If there were a 150 dollar add-on dongle for canon DSLRs that would tag

gps data to all photos, I would most certainly already own it.

 

Impossible, you say? Funny, Sony's GPS-CS1 was released last year at an SRP of 150 bucks.

Canon could make one of these. I personally would LOVE to be able to see all of my

images on a big map of the USA (and beyond, one day).

 

There is no reason to talk down about this technology. iPods weren't necessary until

someone showed us why they were. Neither were cell phones or the internet or any

number of things that we as a society can't live without now.

 

Imagine a 3D, user-populated pictorial version of the world. You could afford to "go"

places you'll never be able to go in real life. It's pretty exciting to me. the gps part is just

another piece of the overall puzzle. If sony can make a 150 dollar dongle for their PnS

camera line and make a profit off of them, then Canon can afford to stick the guts of one

inside a 3000 dollar camera body. I don't understand why so many people here are

arguing against a demonstrably good idea. If you want "simplicity" then you're not buying

a 3000 dollar digital body anyway. Want to talk about unnecessary things? How about 13

megapixel RAW images? Most non-L lenses can't even resolve at that level anyway. But

you don't hear me complaining about the 5D's resolution options.

Mike Dodd: <i>I want to go out and rephotograph these locations many of which I first photographed 10 or 20 years ago to show changes in these habitats (I am an ecologist). There is absolutely no way I could remember where the exact location is to go back to and at the time I took the picture I had no idea that I would want to go back there, so I only recorded the nearest village or name of the approximate area.</i>

 

<p>An unfortunate lack of data collection. But you will probably do better than you think. Consider this:

 

<p>http://www.amazon.com/Footsteps-John-Wesley-Powell-Comparative/dp/1555660258

 

<p>I have that book. And I doubt that John Wesley Powell, or even Shoemaker/Stephens had a GPS receiver.

 

<p>Ben Frey: <i>I don't understand why so many people here are arguing against a demonstrably good idea.</i>

 

<p>The application you have in mind needs more accurate positions -- particularly in the vertical -- than commonly available units provide. You also need accurate estimates of camera orientation as well, which GPS does not provide at all. Are there any ~$100 INS systems available in form-factors you can cram into a camera?

Even ,I want to use GPS with canon but there is no easy way. Only solution is to spend 800/$ for WFT -E2/E2A then a only GPS can be connected. WFT is much more expensive than the top GPS while in Nikon even D200 can be connect directly to a GPS with 60/$ cable.

for Sergey Oboguev attention: my Nikon D2X can record compass data along with longitude and latitude, altitude from Garmin 60CSXmap GPS. I bought cable from http://www.pc-mobile.net/nikon-gps.htm , HKG in which a 2.5mm socket is provided for remote shutter release. Thus it is better and lot cheaper than MC 35 Nikon original.it costs only 60/$ including international postage.There is special cable for recording compass data.

Jobo promised a GPS which will work with all digi cameras but could not produce to market. Now ATP has brought a nice unit in wqhich you put your memory card and it will fill data in exif fields for you. Though they say it is for all digi cameras but fine print is they give you list of compatible cameras where there is no Professional canon model mentioned. Therefore we have to try with Canon on our own. Any how I have ordered ATP PHOTO FINDER 77/GBP today and want to try it with 1Ds Mark 3. Is it not it a pity that after spending 8000/$ on 1Ds mark 3 you have to shell another 800 for using GPS or you cannot?<div></div>

Early in this thread Bob asks: "Did it make his pictures any better?"

 

Of course, he's right that GPS isn't going to make the photographs look better. Let me explain why I think GPS will nevertheless be a valuable tool in the future. I'm in the process of scanning in all the negatives that my parents took as I was growing up. I don't know where half of them were taken--sometimes locations switch several times on one roll. Why do I care? Maybe I'd like to visit those places again. Maybe I'd be able to figure out who was in a picture if I knew where it was taken. Maybe I just need a little help compensating for the lack of attention I paid when I was 3 years old. Maybe my grandchildren will be curious about me and my life when I'm gone.

 

Another advantage of GPS would be in helping to find photos. I've got more than 20,000 photos loaded and organized in Lightroom. I recently wanted to send someone a photo I took in Boston. I looked in my Boston Trips folder in Lightroom and couldn't find it. Perhaps it was miscategorized? I don't know. However, imagine that I had the GPS data for that photo, and that Lightroom had a GPS search (which I'm sure it will someday). I'd be able to find the photo easily. Also, by having the GPS information in the exif data, I'd still be able to do this search if in 20 years Adobe stops producing Lightroom.

http://photofinder.atpinc.com/

I used it for 3 months and I felt it's a very useful tool for Geotagging application.

I have the SONY GPS-CS1, it's the first geotagging device on the market, but it's too stupid. Why ?

1. ATP PhotoFinder has a LCD screen:

It just provides a function to adjust and check your camera's clock.

Nobody won't always watch the small sceen. Why ? Because it's not a navigation device to provide a map.

To adjust the camera's clock is ensure the photo's record time and date can match PhotoFinder's GPS data.

Like SONY's GPS-CS1, because it has no LCD screen to adjust my camera, so I often took a lot of photos but several can't be tagged successfully. Why ? Because the time record can't match and sync.. ATP PhotoFinder has a LCD screen, it's a benefit for users.

 

2. Signal lost:

As we know the GPS has 3 modes: Cold start/Warm start/Hot start.

From my experience, any GPS device is easy to lose signals because the signal is easy to interfere by environment, especially tall building, cloudy day or even rainy day.

But if the GPS device can receive the 1st signal and stable, anytime it can be a hot start mode as long as you don't power off it.

What is the hot start mode? When you lost the signal, it can acquire the signal within 1 second depends on the GPS module chipset. I think SirF III can reach the standard and I ensure PhotoFinder can do.

 

3. Built-in SD/MMC/MS card reader:

It's also a benefit. I believe other similar products on the market, when they do the tagging function, PC is necessary. But they need to install a lot of softwares and steps to tag one photo. If I took 300pcs photos, how long I spend to repeat the step ? Find the location and tag to my photos.

But PhotoFinder provides a OTG " On the Go " function, I can insert my SD or Memory Stick into the PhotoFinder directly, select the correct Time Zone then it will tag all my photos automatically.

It's like a magic box and I don't need a PC to do it. And any brand of camera can use it. It's the biggest benefit.

 

Geotagging is a new field and I believe more and more people will join it and find the joys.

 

That's my experience, for everyone's reference.

It's not a navigation device, PhotoFinder is a Geotagging tool, a magic box to tag all you photos.

I like to get a Canon digital camera with build-in GPS. I have been using Sony GPS-CS1 for over one year and really enjoy it. It is easy to use. The location log file can be used to tag pictures taken with several cameras. I sync my cameras time with http://www.time.gov so I will not get mismatch picture when I do the sync later. Here is the link to my notes about this Sony GPS: http://txphotography.net/map/sonygps/

I have a Canon EOS digital, and GPS would be very useful. I do genealogy research and take photos of grave markers. A GPS would make make it easier. I take an Earthmate GPS PN20 with me and record the location on that device and photograph the grave marker. When I get home I up load the photo to the web site and the GPS location keyed in from the way points in the Earthmate.

 

A couple extra steps to take. A Digital Camera with built in GPS would make this process much quicker and only need the camera and not the camera and hand held GPS.

 

I sometimes take hundreds of grave marker photos on a trip. The time savings would be at least a minute per photo at the cemetery and a half minute on keying the data into the web site.

 

My last cemetery trip I took over 500 grave maker photos all with GPS data. The time savings for me would more that cover the extra cost.

 

I have plans of publishing PHOTO DVDs from cemeteries linked to maps of the cemetery and GPS data so the graves can be found by others.

<p>One good reason would be to easily map photos of a trip across a map. Below is a screenshot of DBGallery's MapView, which will display thumbnails across a map if GeoTag data is in the EXIF of the image (it allows the drag of a marker across a map to GeoTag the photo if it isn't already there). Below I searched for "New York" and saw my images taken across the city. I could have as easily searched for Europe or North America. (DBGallery can be found at http://grrsystems.com/DBGallery)</p>

<p><img src="http://grrsystems.com/DBGallery/ScreenShots/MapView.jpg" alt="" /></p>

<p>I don't see what the big, "why a gps enabled phone" debate is about. It's not a, "geek" thing (although I am a geek :).<br>

It's simply that I have a gazillion photos, and I want information automatically attached to the photo so that I know for certain where it was taken. That doesn't seem like much to ask for.<br>

No, it doesn't it isn't a $400 feature ($20 at most). Modern cellphones really do have GPS's in them (although older and cheaper phones do use basestation signal strength). Why not a camera?<br>

There's a lot of products out there where you upload the tracking info from a separate GPS, and from the track it can figure out where the photo was taken from the photo's time stamp. It's a real bother to carry around a separate GPS, do the upload, etc.., etc... specially if your not a Windows user...<br>

I'd rather be able to point and shoot and get the photo digitally stamped with long and lat.<br>

tom</p>

<p>I came across this thread as I was searching the topic of gps integration with my Canon EOS. The thread is now 4 years old. I was quite surprised by the negative reaction to the posters question, but could see merit to the negativity in terms of added costs ($, weight, failure rate). I'm intrigued by the thread because it appears to show the evolution of an idea and the acceptance of that idea. In 2005, most posters (67%) were negative to the idea. Since 2007, only 11% were negative. I'm curious if that is only because most recent posters are wanting gps and doing similar searches as me. I would really be interested in hearing what Bob Atkins, William Kahn, Ken Papai, and Puppy Face have to say on the topic now. They were opposed to the idea before, and they still seem to be active on Photo.net.</p>

<p>I guess I'll have to get a GPS. It's not a gadget I see much use for, since I'm not map impaired, but I've started a year-long shot-a-day project and expect to publish a locator map at the end. Reconstructing 365 shots seems kinda dumb if I can deal with it as I go along.</p>

<p>For those who don't care about EXIF info, I hope you're not licensing your shots, because if you are, they're probably being stolen.</p>

<p>I use a Canon EOS 50D for aerial photography. Prior to a 24 hours (total) flight, in several sections from Perth Scotland, via Norwich, Lelystad, Schonhagen, Katowice, Szczecin, Copenhagen, Groningen, Southend, Wolverhampton back to Perth, I synchronised the time on the camera to the UTC showing on the Garmin 296 Aviation GPS. This GPS provided detailed tracking of the entire trip.<br>

Post processing of the 700 images taken during the trip, I was able to pinpoint precisely where each image was taken by comparing the time showing in the EXIF data to the GPS track times, on either or both Mapsource and Google Earth, and so identify the area covered by the aerial imagery.<br>

It would be nice to have a camera which would provide this autonomously but you would still need to be downloading the coordinates to Mapsource, or Google Earth or something similar to see where it was precisely that you took the image.</p>