On 12/18/2015 10:00 AM, John Hudson wrote:
Were the photos' latitude and longitude co-ordinates generated by the camera or
by some other device?
In these cases, generated by me. At that time, one was not allowed to operate GPS on a commercial airplane. The rules
all seem to have changed recently, and vary by airline. In any case, I don't think they work inside the metal tube.
There are various ways to do this. In LR, GeoSetter, and I imagine, other apps, one may geotag images using Google Maps
within the app. I seldom bother with doing this to images I take from planes, as I usually don't know where I was with
any accuracy, anyway. In this case, a flight up the Spine of the Cascades on a nice day provided views of most of the
volcanic peaks from Shasta to Rainer, so I spent some quality time with GMaps satellite identifying and geocoding the
images. There are several more I didn't post.
Having a camera that generated these co-ordinates for every image taken could
be a tremendous benefit.
Yes, it could. I don't know about the expensive built-in or add-on GPS for high end DSLRs. I do have some experience
with built-in Geocoding and tracking on some lesser cameras and a little device specifically made to record geotracks.
In all cases so far, it takes the devices far too long to figure out initially where they are.
The two drawbacks I find in the ones in cameras are location acquisition time and battery drain. It can take up to a
minute or more for the GPS to locate itself when turned on, depending, I think, to some extent on how far it is from
last time. For a lengthy session, the ones in cameras are great. But pick up the camera, turn it on, take a pic or a
few, turn it off, then repeat a few minutes or hours later at another spot - and no geocoding in the images. You'll see
below that I have gone to using my phone. For whatever reason(s), the in-camera GPS functions seem to drain their
batteries much more than those in phones. Largely useless to me.
The tiny i-gotU geologger has the same slow location acquisition problem, but has its own battery which lasts quite a
few hours of continuous use. <http://www.i-gotu.com/product/USB_GPS.html> So one may turn it on and leave it on while
using a camera off and on all day.
The latest cameras with WiFi and phone/tablet control apps are supposed to be able to gather GPS data from the connected
device to add to the image as it is taken. I've not tried that. The process looks overly complex and requires that the
WiFi link be on all the time, which seems to me to be problematic. Reviewers have found that to be at least sometimes
true. The separate geotrack solution seems simpler and more reliable to me.
After some years of using the i-gotU, I've switched entirely to using apps on my phone. I happen to have an iPhone and
use GPX Master, but there are various apps for various smart devices. GPX Master is very simple, doing only what I need,
and seemed to use up the battery more slowly than a couple of others I tried.
Because the phone has its location services on all the time, it can provide a GPS location in a second or three. It's
practical taking a shot to start logging in GPX Master, let it record a couple of data points, and stop logging, when
taking pic sporadically. It doesn't have to be on at the moment the image is taken, as there's some leeway. I can grab
the camera, shoot, then record the location. GPX Master can link to DropBox, so the track files appear automagically on
all my other devices, including the desktop where I run the geocoding.
I was initially concerned, from my reading, about battery life. As it turns out, with my iPhone 5s and GPX Master, I can
use it for several hours before battery becomes a problem, especially if I remember to turn logging off and on
appropriately. But even when I don't, I've had little problem. I did get one of those cheap little auxiliary batteries
that can charge the phone in the field. I think I actually needed it once. I do charge the phone when in the car on the
road.
The process of using a geotrack file (.gpx) to code images is pretty simple. LR can read GPX files and use them to code
images. there's also a free PC app,GeoSetter, that I used before LR added the Map module, and still use fairly often.
They work by coordinating image time stamps to GPX data points. There is facility for adjusting when the camera time was
not accurate. GPX files are small, dead simple text files with a line of comma delimited text for each data point.
The vast majority of my image files from the last several years are geocoded. This provides a great way to locate them
in the LR catalog without keywords.
Where in the World Was Moose
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What if the Hokey Pokey *IS* what it's all about?
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