GPS Location

<p>Aside from putting Nikon's device on my hotshoe, how can I get GPS data - location - into the metadata for the photos I take? I am willing to use a separate device to mark my location when I take a shot, but how can I associate that data with the photo?<br>

I know I can drag the photos onto a map to get the coordinates, but first I have to know those coordinates. So, how can I take the GPS data and add it to a photo?</p>

<p>I think you'll need a GPS device regardless. An easy way might be to enable geotagging on your smartphone or (GPS equipped) tablet and snap a parallel photo along with your Nikon. </p>

<p>If you want to get fancy, there are off-line mapping apps available to allow waypoints marking and route tracking. An example is Orux Maps for Android:<br>

<a href="http://www.oruxmaps.com/index_en.html">http://www.oruxmaps.com/index_en.html</a></p>

 

<p>Thanks. I'll take a look at Orlux. I know I can use my iPad touch to take a duplicate photo and get the coordinates, but how can I get that data into the photo, without spending a lot of money?</p>

I carry a separate handheld garmin

with me. Then I use a program called

PhotoLinker

(http://www.earlyinnovations.com/photo

linker/) to merge the GPS data to the

photos.

 

I've heard rumor that LR4 supports

geotagging so I'm currious to see if

upgrading will make PhotoLinker

unnecessary.

Julieanne Kost from Adobe posted a video doing this using the mapping feature in Lightroom 4.

 

http://blogs.adobe.com/jkost/2012/03/video-tutorial-mapping-your-photos-in-lightroom-4.html

 

Good luck.

--Wade

<p>I suppose you need the camera hot shoe for a flash or a CLS commander or for a radio transmitter/trigger?</p>

<p>You do not have to install the Nikon GP-1 unit in the camera hot shoe, since there is no connectivity or functionality between the hot shoe and GP-1.<br /> GP-1 is connectable via suitable cord with latest Nikon cameras 10 pin control socket, or with the remote camera control socket.</p>

<p>You will need Nikon Camera Strap Clip to attach the GP-1, and leave your camera hot shoe free to use for anything else.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.nikonusa.com/Nikon-Products/Product/GPS/27005/GP1-CL1-Camera-Strap-Clip-for-GP-1-.html">http://www.nikonusa.com/Nikon-Products/Product/GPS/27005/GP1-CL1-Camera-Strap-Clip-for-GP-1-.html</a></p>

@Wade, thank you for the link to that video. It looks like LR4 does most of what PhotoLinker does. The only important

thing PhotoLinker does that the LR4 video didn't mention is provide a way to bulk modify the times on photos to make the

locations correct. If one photo is off by a couple minutes, they all are.

<p>Photolinker is for Mac, and I use Windows. LR4 can work with photos that already have the GPS data imbedded, but there is no way to add the GPS data using LR4. If I know exactly where a photo was taken, I can drag it to a map and get the coordinates. If I don't know where it was taken, I can't drag it to a map.</p>

@Jerry, according to the video that Wade linked to, you can load a GPS track file into LR4 and tag your photos. You just

need to make sure your camera's internal clock is accurate.

<p>I have Nikon's own GP1 but I don't use that all the time, only sometimes. There are similar third-party products. As Frank points out, you can mount the GP1 on the hot shoe or clip it on the camera strap, if that is your concern. When you buy the GP1, it comes with that clip, standard. There are similar alternatives that use blue tooth to communicate with the camera so that there is no cable connecting the GPS and the camera body, but that blue tooth device will still take up the 10-pin connector on the camera.</p>

<p>Otherwise, you need a GPS that records your location over time and there are different software to copy your recorded location to your image files afterwards. In that case the key is that the camera's clock (i.e. the time stamps in your image files) must be synchronized with the clock in your GPS. If the clocks are off, so will your location record.</p>

<p>Thanks for all your help. This isn't do-or-die, but I'd like to be able to associate photos with their locations. I'm going to be taking shots of our town, and it would be nice to be able to pinpoint where the photos were taken.</p>

<p>I use a garmin Oregon 450t GPS + the program (freeware) Geosetter. Pictures are syncronised based on the time, so you have to set the camera's time according to the GPS time, although Geosetter lets you define an offset. LR4 seems to have this built in but I haven't been able to get it to work.</p>

<p>Jerry, is there any reason that you would rather not get Nikon's GP1? Before I bought mine, I read somewhat mixed reviews of it, but so far it has worked quite well for me. Sometimes having another accessory connected to the camera is a bit annoying.</p>

<p>And which camera bodies are you using? I believe you have a D7000, right? The GP1 comes with two cables, one is the 10-pin type for the D3, D4, D800, D700, and D300 type camera. The other one is for the lower-end bodies such as D90 and D7000. I use the GP1 on my D7000, D300, and D700.</p>

<p>I'm a big fan of the foolography <a href="http://www.foolography.com/products/unleashed-dx000/">Unleashed</a> products.<br>

I use a slightly different version (the D200+) which plugs into the 10-pin release socket, but for your body the Dx000 product is the correct choice. They are quite similar I think. The basic idea is that the Unleashed is essentially a bluetooth dongle that connects your camera body to your choice of Bluetooth-enabled GPS devices. There are many commodity Bluetooth GPS devices. <br>

Here are the reasons I think it's a better choice than the Nikon GP-1:<br>

1. Because the GPS device is separate, it uses its own battery, and the camera body's battery is not drained.<br>

2. Because the GPS device is separate, you can simply slip it into a pocket and leave it on (mine will work all day like that, maintaining a full-time fix even when the camera is off)<br>

3. Because the GPS device can stay on when the camera is off, the camera can GPS-stamp images taken seconds (3-4 seconds for example) after it is powered on. With the GP-1, after turning on the camera body you have to wait for it to acquire a fix.<br>

4. If you go indoors, the Unleashed will retain memory of your location for some minutes before it starts to tell the camera body there is no location information. This is helpful in most cases.<br>

5. Using an Unleashed product leaves the hotshoe free.<br>

The only caveat I would give with the Unleashed is that you should tether it to the camera body. Because they're so small, losing them would be a pain.</p>

I have 3 apps that I sell for geotagging from a track log. There are two things that have to be

right for the matching process to work:

 

1. The GPS track records time in GMT*, so the matching app has to know what time zone the

camera's clock was set to. Note that this is not necessarily the same as the time zone the

photos were taken in. If geotagging is important to your work and you'll be traveling a lot,

consider setting your camera to your home local time or GMT and leaving it there. If you keep

reseting it, it will be very hard to remember what you had it set to for each group of photos.

 

2. The camera's clock has to be accurate, especially if you're moving when you take the

photos (e.g., from a car). If you're stationary for a few minutes when you shoot, then the

clocks only have to agree to within a minute or so. My apps always provide a way to

synchronize the photo time with the GPS track log. (This is completely different from the time

zone issue.) In her LR4 tutorial, Julianne Kost recommends changing the time of the images if

their time is off, but that's very cumbersome, and unnecessary, as the camera's clock is the

same amount off for every photo. A single correction for all photos is all that's needed.

 

-----

 

* One popular iPhone app for recording a track log I tested did not record times in GMT, due to the developer's

misunderstanding of the GPX standard. Watch out for this!

<p>James Youngman --<br>

So I would need the Unleashed and then a bluetooth GPS - like a Holux product, correct?</p>

<p>Shun --<br>

As for the Nikon GP1, I don't like that large unit sitting on the camera, or somewhere else, attached by a wire. It seems too bulky. Also, I read reviews about the unit that were not very good.</p>

<p>I use Garmin GPSMap 60Cx and the .gpx-file it makes. Then I use Jeffrey Friend's LR Plugin to move the correct places to pictures. Of course it is essential, that the clock of camera and gps are in same time zone and correct. The plugin allows you correct systematic errors in cameras time-label. I have use dalso GeoSetter, but it makes a copy from the picture, what I consider not good. I have to manually take them off.</p>

<p>I am an infrequent user of geotagging, and so have adopted http://gps4cam.com/<br>

It uses iPhone or Android Phone gps data to tag photos when you transfer them to you computer, and you don't have to worry about synchronization of clocks on the two devices.<br>

Not the most elegant solution, but it works well. I don't want to use the 10 pin connector for acquisition of gps data because I can then not use it for a shutter release, which I consider essential in much of my landscape work.<br>

There are devices that will allow pass through of the 10 pin connector, but they get kind of pricey. GPS4CAM is $2.99.</p>

<p>Another application for this is called geosetter - if you have a gps tracklog that you've downloaded from a GPS unit (either as .gpx or a .txt file) it will look at the time/date stamp of your photos and find the closest position to that from the tracklog and then assign those coordinates to your photos. It works fairly slick. I used this method to geotag and position several thousand photos from a project that my company was working on over the last year. The application also will create a Google Earth KML file, and has Google Maps embedded so you can adjust the locations of your images if they aren't positioned quite to your liking.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>James Youngman --<br />So I would need the Unleashed and then a bluetooth GPS - like a Holux product, correct?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Yes, exactly!<br>

<br /></p>

<p>I have a post somewhere with Holux Gpslim connected to D300.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>I have a post somewhere with Holux Gpslim connected to D300.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Perhaps this one? <a href="../filters-bags-tripods-accessories-forum/00YjtY">http://www.photo.net/filters-bags-tripods-accessories-forum/00YjtY</a></p>