GPS for 5D3

If you've got a smartphone and Lightroom 4, you might find this interesting.

http://tv.adobe.com/watch/creative-suite-podcast-photographers/how-to-use-gpx-logs-to-geotag-your-photos-with-lightroom-4/

Any GPS track logger will do the job.

I use a GP-E2 now, but previously (and still as a back-up) I used a cheap Holux logger. Works fine.

GPS enabled smartphones do the job too - but I find they chew the batteries a bit fast and I'd rather keep that power available for communication. But they are certainly a fine option too.

I was looking into that myself last week and i came across the adobetv bit and i ordered the iPhone app (exists also for Android) and put it to the test with great success !

At this point in time, i have decided to wait on GP-E2 mostly due to its size. I have both 5DIII and 1DX and thought that GP-E2 was the best way to go until I was able to handle it at my camera shop... I was initially expecting something much smaller, and also less costly...
The iPhone App is great and so inexpensive, furthermore, it does the job with any camera, regardless of the brand ! All you need to do is set the correct time on the camera before you start shooting, and on your sole task in front of your computer is to download the .GPX file to Lightroom and "voilà"

My only unanswered question to this day is wether or not that solution will work when the iPhone does not have a valid GSM signal (out in the wild...), does iPhone 4S have a real GPS ???

My 0,02€

Cheers

Philippe

--
Phil (Nice, FR)
www.pbase.com/webman06
www.eosdslr.com

What is the name of the iPhone app? I have not seen the adobeTV bit. (Never mind. Just watched the AdobeTV video and found the name of the app).

The iPhone does not have "real" gps and only uses the carrier signal to determine the location - probably from triangulation of local towers. I found this out when researching the question for my step-son who lives in Eastern Europe and takes hikes in places without cell service. No cell service with the iPhone - no GPS functionality.

If you can give me that name of the iPhone app I will give it a try. (As above I now have the name).

I also have a "real" gps (a Garmin trail GPS) and if I can figure out how to use that it would probably be better since it works off of the satellite signals rather than cell phone signals. Perhaps Google will help ...

Thanks.

Thanks for the link.

As far as I can tell the Holux logger is a separate gps tracker and requires that the user run software later to match the tracks with the photos. At least that is what I found when I Googled Holux gps logger. Further, since I shoot in raw, I am not sure that the matching software would be able to properly add the gps coordinates to the raw EXIF data.

I was thinking of an actual device that attached to the camera and caused the gps coordinates to be embedded directly in the EXIF data in the raw files. That is what I understand the GP-E2 does and I was looking for a similar device that would be somewhat less expensive. My issue is that, as far as I can tell, LR4's MAP module, which will match photos with gps coordinates, does so in an external file and does not directly place the entries in the raw EXIF file. Perhaps I am wrong about that but, even if I am, LR4 is not my default processing software - PhotoNinja is, so I would have to use LR4 to add the gps data and then export to dng so I could use PhotoNinja to do my processing. One more step that I would just assume avoid (not to mention the extra raw files I would have to store).

I have looked into the smartphone apps and I will probably try them (the cost is so low) but I am still mostly interested in an on-camera device. Are there any third party devices that act like the GP-E2 that you know of? I have not had any luck searching online.

The iPhone unquestionably has real GPS (since the iPhone 3G four years ago) — in fact, in certain ways its GPS is quite a bit better than “normal” GPS, because it can use Wi-Fi signals to achieve position lock much faster than with GPS alone. However, like almost all non-dedicated GPS units, its antenna is very small, and so it won’t get lock in many cases where a dedicated, standalone GPS unit would.

I’ve been using a Garmin eTrex HCx (and now about to upgrade to a Garmin eTrex 30) for years with my EOS cameras (first the original Digital Rebel, then 5D, soon 5D3). You sync the camera’s time with the GPS unit, leave the unit on, then use a program (I’ve been using HoudahGeo) to stamp the location data into the EXIF data in your images.

Advantages: the GPS unit will go 40+ hours on one set of lithium AAs; it picks up signal many places a non-dedicated GPS won’t; much more flexibility (e.g., if you go inside, your Canon GPS will lose signal and just not timestamp a photo, but you can tell HoudahGeo “interpolate between the nearest timestamped GPS locations as long as they’re not more than 30 minutes nor 500 meters apart”, which is awesome); and you, well, have a standalone GPS unit, which I love for hiking.

A good and cheap solution to the georeferencing of your photos

http://www.amazon.com/GiSTEQ-PhotoTrackr-Lite-DPL700-Tracker/dp/B0010EMIT6

The new eyefi cards do "GPS" but use cell towers to triangulate rather than satellites.

--
- Bill

So far, the GP-E2 seems to be the only option for tagging in the camera.

GPS4CAM is a phone app that works well. After a shooting session it displays a QR code that you photograph.

Then the GPS coordinates can be inserted into jpeg or raw files on your computer. You just point the software to the image of the QR code, and the photos that you want to tag.

Not as nice as the GP-E2, but it works quite well.

Tom

iPhone as a logger is ok, but it ban't put position into picture. That needs gp-e2, too bad canon put GPS in 6d not 5d3.

That's where LR4 comes in.  It can merge the GPS track data with the photos and tag each photo with the position it was taken by matching times.

This is certainly at odds with what I was told when I asked about this very item. I wanted to buy an iPhone for my step-son who lives in a rural area of Eastern Europe. He wanted something that would allow him to wander in the woods without worry about finding his way back, but he was not within cell service. I was specifically told that the gps on the iPhone was not real but used the cell towers to find the location. No cell service, no gps.

Perhaps I was badly informed but I relied on that information (which, as I remember, came from a trustworthy source although, to be honest, I don't remember where). I will check with Apple to be sure and post what I find out.

When you use HoudahGeo what types of files does it add the gps information to? jpgs? raws? tiffs?

What I want to do is to is add the information directly to the Canon raw files so I can be sure the proper EXIF data will end up in the processed jpgs. Since I don't (generally) use LR4 I don't (particularly) want to have to use it just to add the gps data and then process the exported dng files instead of the raw files.

But, to the best of my knowledge, it will not actually add the data to the Exif but adds it to a "sidecar" file. If you then write a new file it will include it, but if you want to process raw files outside of LR you are out of luck.

Dunno.  Since I do all my raw processing in LR4, it's a non issue for me.

You might want to take a look at this app.  It allows you to download a desktop program to do the merging outside of LR4.  May or may not address your problem.

http://www.ephotozine.com/article/geotag-photos-pro-iphone-app-review-17474

I have just spoken with Apple technical support and their response was that the iPhone does not, and never has, had "real gps". No data connection, no gps. Data connection, gps.

You can use cell service or wifi to get gps but if you have no service, you have no gps. And, according to them, that has always been the state of gps on the iPhone.

I now have 2 iPhone apps to test for their ability to add gps to the photos. Gps4Cam and GeoTag Photos Pro. But both have the same drawback - if there is no cell service there is no gps information since the iPhone does not have "real" gps but rather only the gps it can get from a data signal. So, if I am out making photos in the middle of a US National Park, I probably cannot expect to get any gps data to add to the photos.

I was really hoping for something less expensive than the GP-E2 to use to insert real gps data into the images but perhaps there is nothing else. The iPhone app is probably a good short-term solution but, since I frequently camp and hike in National Parks, it leaves a pretty big gap in my geotagging ability.

Hmm. My understanding is that the iPhone 3 and above, and many other gps-capable devices, have what's called assisted GPS or A-GPS. And A-GPS does communicate with satellites.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_GPS

I think you're mistaken about this.