Geotagging... What do i need?

M

Matt.

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I have a 5dmk2, and want to geotag my photos. How do i do this with the minimal amount of effort? Do i need some kind of logging device? If so which is best?

I use Lightroom if that matters.


Thanks
 
Yes, you will need a GPS Logger. I use this one Genie BGT-31. It's not the smallest and it's not the cheapest, but it'll run for a couple of days non-stop on a single charge and it'll lock on to the satellites inside its case, inside a bag, inside a seat pocket, inside a bus. You can set this up to record the relevant info at set intervals (either time or distance). Mine logs a point every minute. I just ensure the GPS clock and my camera's clock are the same, drop the GPS into a bag and forget about it until the end of the day.

When I get back to my PC I use a program called GeoSetter (which is free) to add the GPS data to my images. There's also a plugin for Lightroom which will do something similar (although I've not used it).
 
Depends how acurate you need/want to be.

You can add the location data (long and lat) using software like Apples Aperture or iPhoto, which has a place on map fuction. The maps being very similar to google maps wher you can zoom right down into street level. I'm sure other sowtware will do it to this standard, even flickr will I think.


If you need it to be closer than this then as Frank says some form of hardware GPS unit will be requried.
 
I use my Garmin Forerunner GPS or my Garmin Etrex to pruduce a KML file then import it into Geosetter.

Only problem I have is the etrex sometimes loses position and I end up with more than one file to import.

You can pick up a Garmin etrex for about £50 and it can be used for Geocaching too which is a bonus.
 
It needs to be simple, reliable, small(ish), and have long battery life. I don't want to have it run out half way through the day.

The Genie one looks ideal, but over £100 might be pushing it a little far for me.
 
Matt. said:
It needs to be simple, reliable, small(ish), and have long battery life. I don't want to have it run out half way through the day.

The Genie one looks ideal, but over £100 might be pushing it a little far for me.
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Yes, that's what I thought when I was looking. But all the reviews were great and battery life was important. So I was quite pleased in Kenya when I forgot about it and left it recording a data point every second for over three days!

I used to have an Etrex, but it was too big and the battery seemed to be dead every time I wanted to use it.
 
I am so confused by what to buy. There are so many options!

The Amod looks good, but i can't find it for sale anywhere?

Ideally i'd prefer something i can charge via usb from a laptop so i don't have to carry more stuff around. Are there any that do this?

The Sony GPS-CS3 looks interesting. It has a screen which is handy, and is ~£75.
 
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Interested in this actually, yeah can anyone suggest an iPhone app that works?
 
I have an iPhone, but it doesn't have the battery power to do a full days tracking.
 
Matt. said:
That's £130!
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Yup, that was my reaction. However, I soon realised that I had to compromise somewhere - size, usability, battery life, sensitivity, price - at least one of those would have to be sacrificed in favour of the others. In the end I decided that the annoyance of spending extra cash would be a temporary affair, whilst the annoyance of having to recharge batteries every few hours whould be an eternal PITA.
 
As you use Lightroom you really want this plug in... Jeffrey’s “GPS-Support” Geoencoding Plugin for Lightroom

All you then need is something to provide a GPS track-log. I personally use a Wintec WBT-202 GPS logger which takes a micro-SD card enabling logging for weeks as a time quite happily (handy for long holidays - battery lasts more than 12 hours on a single charge).

Using GPS Babel with the linked plug in means you can also geo-encode your images from the native Wintec files with ease.
 
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Anyone know if it's possible to geotag images by pinpointing on a map rather than logging?

Basically, I have a project where I want to present images through a map based online platform but I already have a lot of images shot and some of them are/will be shot on film so properly collecting data and tagging images up isn't really practical.

I could just host my images somewhere and then attach them to a Google map (I did this for a mock up presentation of the project) but Google maps are butt ugly! I imagine that there might be a much more aesthetically pleasing solution in the form of a geotagging service.
 
Dan Carr has a blog post about Geotagging that seemed quite useful.
 
fixedimage said:
Anyone know if it's possible to geotag images by pinpointing on a map rather than logging?

Basically, I have a project where I want to present images through a map based online platform but I already have a lot of images shot and some of them are/will be shot on film so properly collecting data and tagging images up isn't really practical.
Click to expand...
If you use windows, then Geosetter is a fantastic bit of freeware that will do what you want. It also allows changing of the exif info that's useful with scanned film shots. Brilliant little programme.
 
Im really Mac based but could be windows if it came to it, I had a look at Geosetter and then from a link there, Locr. Geosetter seems to be based around me viewing my photos rather than showing them to others and Locr was, similar to map function I found on google, difficult to see how it can be integrated into a website.
 
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