Geotag gear?
- Thread starter illetyus
- Start date
Horoscope Fish
Senior Member
The Solmeta Geotagger N3-C. That or the Solmeta GMAX depending on how much you want to spend.
The GMAX is more expensive but it contains it's own battery, which is kind of nice.
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Don Kuykendall_RIP
RIP :(
Welcome to the forum. I have looked at all the options and have settled on a option that does not involve the camera or extra gear. If you have an iPhone and use Lightroom this is a fantastic option. GPS Tracks Just download the app and run it while you are shooting. When the shoot is over you save the trip and I actually send it to my dropbox account. When I get home I open Lightroom and download all my photos into lightroom and then switch to the Map mode in LR and load the GPX file into lightroom and highlight all the photos and sync. Every photo is then geotagged. Fairly easy to do once you learn the sequence. You ust have to remember to start the app when you start to shoot.
Don Kuykendall_RIP
RIP :(
Here is a screen grab from the Map tab of Lightroom of my recent trip to the zoo. Each little box with a number in it shows where I stopped and shot a photo. The number is how many shots I took at that location. If you click on the box it highlights the photos taken and you can then go to it in the develop mode. Pretty neat trick.
Here is the screen grab of the EXIF data showing what is saved
Pretty good for a $3.99 app
Here is the screen grab of the EXIF data showing what is saved
Pretty good for a $3.99 app
Don Kuykendall_RIP
RIP :(
I couldn't find a one stop shop to understand Geotagging so I thought I'd add to this thread for anybody new. I've never bothered with Geotagging before, but you can take loads of photos with a digicam or dslr. Trips where you visit several places and some by boat or air make location identification a pain when you get back with a few hundred photos.
My simple manual 'tagging' technique has been to shoot a location sign if I can find one, but that can be out of sequence, so I decided to look into Geotagging. I looked at the Nikon GP-1A and it all seemed wrong: It doesn't have the latest SiRF IV low power chipset, draws power from the camera battery, requires the camera door open, sacrifices the flash mount and has a wire. You can only use it with one camera. This makes it all hard to slip in and out of a holster bag which I use. It's a real pity my D750 didn't have a short range low power bluetooth for the camera to talk to third party GPS loggers!
You have 2 choices to Geotag your photos - On camera with the Nikon GP-1A or use a third party GPS tracker off the camera. These have their own re-chargeable battery. You make sure all your cameras (and phones!) are set to the same time (UTC or a local offset) and wifey cam is shooting close by. Your small GPS tracker in the top of your camera bag or shirt pocket keeps grabbing a GPS location at regular intervals. At the end of a day or however long the device tracks and stores data, you transfer a file to your laptop then PC at the edit workstation which has all the location information to match location to the time of your shots. Well it gets close and for reasons of how many satellits are visible, the actual location may be several metres different but that shouldn't be an issue for most photos.
For my GPS track logger I chose the cheap GT-600 by Mobile Action Technology. This is based on SiRF III chips which are not as low on battery power (19mA) as the newer SiRF IV available as USB plug in dongles. But what matters is how many track points the tracker will log (memory), how often and whether you can set your own time interval. The GT-600 is a little dated having evolved from a design several years ago but it works. It now has motion sensing to stop logging when not moved and you can set longer times between GPS samples to further extend its battery life. This can be handy if you keep it in your camera bag because after a shoot back at your hotel it will power down to extend battery life. These are things to look for when considering a photo Geotag system. I set my GT-600 to log at 1 minute intervals but there's also a badly designed button which captures a live location waypoint, so I press that just before or after a shot for improved location accuracy. The 750mA re-chargeable battery is claimed to run for over 200 hours the way I set mine up.
The GT-600 comes with a software pack (aimed at walkers, cyclists and fitness freaks) but includes a photo section. On its own without any other software it will Geotag a folder of Jpegs but not NEF raws. I still shoot medium to low res JPEGs with my NEFs and I can quickly get the camera JPEGs tagged if I'm on location, without running heavy weight apps like Photshop or Lightroom. If there's an internet connection you can see your tracklog on a Google Earth map.
Shooting NEF raw you need to go a step further because most of the cheaper GPS loggers won't support it with their own software. However, the GT-600 and similar trackers can export a GPX file which can be read by applications that will tag NEF raws and the same file can be uploaded to www.visualizer.com where you can select from a plethora of map types to show your captured track log. From your saved .gpx files there are 2 or 3 ways to Geotag your NEF raws.
Back at your edit station if you run Photoshop with Bridge you can add the excellent free geotag script by Yegor Korzh to Bridge. I copy the same GPX file to all folders I create from my batch NEFs. You can then run the Bridge script and get all NEFs in the folder tagged. The advantage to some of this method is Bridge uses existing or creates a new sidecar file and the original image is unaltered with no risk of corruption. Lightroom has the GPX import and tagging built in so you don't need a script. However, watch you don't clog up Bridge working with a big NEF folder, be patient and wait. I don't use Lightroom but I don't think it uses sidecar files.
If you don't use Adobe products for Post you can download GPicSync which is free, fast, lightweight and can used on its own on location. GPicSync does modify the NEF raw directly, but allows an unedited backup to be saved. GPicSync allows time offsets to sync with your photos which they sign + and -. If GPicSync bombs with an error trying to tag each file you haven't synched the correct time!
Showing your track log route on a map before you commit to photo tagging is quite important. Previously anybody could use Google Earth to upload their own gpx track log files and show their tracks on a Google map. You can still do that with Google 'My maps' but you need to register an account first to see the option on screen and Google gets data on you! I don't know how the third party apps do it?
If you are not bored so far I'll summarize a simple and efficient 'workflow' to Geotag your photos:
1. Make sure your mobile tracker device and cameras are all synchronized to the same time or the cameras all have the same time offset. The track logs only log GPS UTC (GMT) time. Local time differences are set in the software used with them or the photo tagging software. Beware of cameras or phones with automatic daylight saving turned on. You can still apply time offset corrections but it's just another thing to do. There's plenty of discussion about what time to set your camera to. My choice in Europe is UTC (GMT) with automatic daylight saving off. If I need an image tagged with the exact shot time I can change its EXIF to local time. If you have a big UTC/local time (or date!) difference you might prefer local time without daylight saving. If you are crossing time zones, find a time sync solution that works best for you and stick with it.
2. Switch on your charged GPS track logger before you leave home and check you have saved and cleared any old track logs still in memory. If it needs a special charging cable, keep it in your camera bag!
3. Take your shots. I try to remember to press the manual waypoint button to add an accurate track location for each shot group. Keep shooting. If you turn off the logger and turn it back on it keeps tracking but starts a new track log. This is no problem using the GT-600 and its @TripPC software because you can join several log files together. You might actually want to do that for shots grouped in different locations and folders taken several days apart. However, a bunch of individual track logs combined in one file is still small compared to one NEF raw image.
4. At the end of the day or within the battery life of the logger, connect and load the data to a laptop whilst also saving a gpx file. Erase old data in the logger to free up memory. If you don't have a laptop and can't clear the device memory you are stuffed so 200 hours from a charge is a good idea!!
5. Back at your edit workstation, transfer your images to folders, however you archive. Put a copy of the gpx track log in each folder. Upload your gpx track log to check it is what you expect. With the GT-600 you can do this in their application @tripPC for JPGs. if you find track point errors you can easily edit the gpx log file. The GT-600 had a big time and date bug, but this gets fixed if you download their latest software and drivers - one reason you can get it fairly cheap. It's downside is its big button which is easily activated, but I will fix that on mine.
6. Open Adobe Bridge with the added geotag script, select the image folder with gpx file (NEFs or JPGs) and Bridge will tag and produce a confirmation report. You should now be able to see geotags in your NEF raw EXIF data. There are several websites and some applications that allow an image file to be drag and dropped and a thumbnail of your image shown on a map e.g Geotag Photos Online although there may be privacy issues to consider. Use low res olution JPEgs for faster upload. This is still an uncertain area for NEFs because the site or application needs to know the image file structure and where to extract the EXIF geolocators the other problem online is the huge file sizes. To map a large folder of NEF raw images online you need a local software application that extracts the location data and thumbnail from each file (small data upload), then shows the thumbnail and location on a map. Which is why I still shoot both NEF raw and JPEG.
At the moment the future for geotagging is with the SiRF IV lower power chipsets and faster acquisition being built into devices, so Nikon will need to catch up! There are some cheap USB pen devices available, but they don't all come with decent software, a large memory and big battery, although the minimum you need is to export a .gpx track log file. Garmin devices are relatively expensive and rather large with too many features for simple photo Geotagging. I am not recommending any particular GPS tagger and software but you should be able to extract sufficient from my experience with the GT-600 to get the right features and more from an alternative product.
Happy photo Geotagging and I hope this helps.
My simple manual 'tagging' technique has been to shoot a location sign if I can find one, but that can be out of sequence, so I decided to look into Geotagging. I looked at the Nikon GP-1A and it all seemed wrong: It doesn't have the latest SiRF IV low power chipset, draws power from the camera battery, requires the camera door open, sacrifices the flash mount and has a wire. You can only use it with one camera. This makes it all hard to slip in and out of a holster bag which I use. It's a real pity my D750 didn't have a short range low power bluetooth for the camera to talk to third party GPS loggers!
You have 2 choices to Geotag your photos - On camera with the Nikon GP-1A or use a third party GPS tracker off the camera. These have their own re-chargeable battery. You make sure all your cameras (and phones!) are set to the same time (UTC or a local offset) and wifey cam is shooting close by. Your small GPS tracker in the top of your camera bag or shirt pocket keeps grabbing a GPS location at regular intervals. At the end of a day or however long the device tracks and stores data, you transfer a file to your laptop then PC at the edit workstation which has all the location information to match location to the time of your shots. Well it gets close and for reasons of how many satellits are visible, the actual location may be several metres different but that shouldn't be an issue for most photos.
For my GPS track logger I chose the cheap GT-600 by Mobile Action Technology. This is based on SiRF III chips which are not as low on battery power (19mA) as the newer SiRF IV available as USB plug in dongles. But what matters is how many track points the tracker will log (memory), how often and whether you can set your own time interval. The GT-600 is a little dated having evolved from a design several years ago but it works. It now has motion sensing to stop logging when not moved and you can set longer times between GPS samples to further extend its battery life. This can be handy if you keep it in your camera bag because after a shoot back at your hotel it will power down to extend battery life. These are things to look for when considering a photo Geotag system. I set my GT-600 to log at 1 minute intervals but there's also a badly designed button which captures a live location waypoint, so I press that just before or after a shot for improved location accuracy. The 750mA re-chargeable battery is claimed to run for over 200 hours the way I set mine up.
The GT-600 comes with a software pack (aimed at walkers, cyclists and fitness freaks) but includes a photo section. On its own without any other software it will Geotag a folder of Jpegs but not NEF raws. I still shoot medium to low res JPEGs with my NEFs and I can quickly get the camera JPEGs tagged if I'm on location, without running heavy weight apps like Photshop or Lightroom. If there's an internet connection you can see your tracklog on a Google Earth map.
Shooting NEF raw you need to go a step further because most of the cheaper GPS loggers won't support it with their own software. However, the GT-600 and similar trackers can export a GPX file which can be read by applications that will tag NEF raws and the same file can be uploaded to www.visualizer.com where you can select from a plethora of map types to show your captured track log. From your saved .gpx files there are 2 or 3 ways to Geotag your NEF raws.
Back at your edit station if you run Photoshop with Bridge you can add the excellent free geotag script by Yegor Korzh to Bridge. I copy the same GPX file to all folders I create from my batch NEFs. You can then run the Bridge script and get all NEFs in the folder tagged. The advantage to some of this method is Bridge uses existing or creates a new sidecar file and the original image is unaltered with no risk of corruption. Lightroom has the GPX import and tagging built in so you don't need a script. However, watch you don't clog up Bridge working with a big NEF folder, be patient and wait. I don't use Lightroom but I don't think it uses sidecar files.
If you don't use Adobe products for Post you can download GPicSync which is free, fast, lightweight and can used on its own on location. GPicSync does modify the NEF raw directly, but allows an unedited backup to be saved. GPicSync allows time offsets to sync with your photos which they sign + and -. If GPicSync bombs with an error trying to tag each file you haven't synched the correct time!
Showing your track log route on a map before you commit to photo tagging is quite important. Previously anybody could use Google Earth to upload their own gpx track log files and show their tracks on a Google map. You can still do that with Google 'My maps' but you need to register an account first to see the option on screen and Google gets data on you! I don't know how the third party apps do it?
If you are not bored so far I'll summarize a simple and efficient 'workflow' to Geotag your photos:
1. Make sure your mobile tracker device and cameras are all synchronized to the same time or the cameras all have the same time offset. The track logs only log GPS UTC (GMT) time. Local time differences are set in the software used with them or the photo tagging software. Beware of cameras or phones with automatic daylight saving turned on. You can still apply time offset corrections but it's just another thing to do. There's plenty of discussion about what time to set your camera to. My choice in Europe is UTC (GMT) with automatic daylight saving off. If I need an image tagged with the exact shot time I can change its EXIF to local time. If you have a big UTC/local time (or date!) difference you might prefer local time without daylight saving. If you are crossing time zones, find a time sync solution that works best for you and stick with it.
2. Switch on your charged GPS track logger before you leave home and check you have saved and cleared any old track logs still in memory. If it needs a special charging cable, keep it in your camera bag!
3. Take your shots. I try to remember to press the manual waypoint button to add an accurate track location for each shot group. Keep shooting. If you turn off the logger and turn it back on it keeps tracking but starts a new track log. This is no problem using the GT-600 and its @TripPC software because you can join several log files together. You might actually want to do that for shots grouped in different locations and folders taken several days apart. However, a bunch of individual track logs combined in one file is still small compared to one NEF raw image.
4. At the end of the day or within the battery life of the logger, connect and load the data to a laptop whilst also saving a gpx file. Erase old data in the logger to free up memory. If you don't have a laptop and can't clear the device memory you are stuffed so 200 hours from a charge is a good idea!!
5. Back at your edit workstation, transfer your images to folders, however you archive. Put a copy of the gpx track log in each folder. Upload your gpx track log to check it is what you expect. With the GT-600 you can do this in their application @tripPC for JPGs. if you find track point errors you can easily edit the gpx log file. The GT-600 had a big time and date bug, but this gets fixed if you download their latest software and drivers - one reason you can get it fairly cheap. It's downside is its big button which is easily activated, but I will fix that on mine.
6. Open Adobe Bridge with the added geotag script, select the image folder with gpx file (NEFs or JPGs) and Bridge will tag and produce a confirmation report. You should now be able to see geotags in your NEF raw EXIF data. There are several websites and some applications that allow an image file to be drag and dropped and a thumbnail of your image shown on a map e.g Geotag Photos Online although there may be privacy issues to consider. Use low res olution JPEgs for faster upload. This is still an uncertain area for NEFs because the site or application needs to know the image file structure and where to extract the EXIF geolocators the other problem online is the huge file sizes. To map a large folder of NEF raw images online you need a local software application that extracts the location data and thumbnail from each file (small data upload), then shows the thumbnail and location on a map. Which is why I still shoot both NEF raw and JPEG.
At the moment the future for geotagging is with the SiRF IV lower power chipsets and faster acquisition being built into devices, so Nikon will need to catch up! There are some cheap USB pen devices available, but they don't all come with decent software, a large memory and big battery, although the minimum you need is to export a .gpx track log file. Garmin devices are relatively expensive and rather large with too many features for simple photo Geotagging. I am not recommending any particular GPS tagger and software but you should be able to extract sufficient from my experience with the GT-600 to get the right features and more from an alternative product.
Happy photo Geotagging and I hope this helps.
Last edited: