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JulesJ

JulesJ

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Having travelled a fair bit and taken many photographs I thought it would be good to have some sort of GPS on my camera. many times I have known roughly where I took a photo but not exactly and would like to. This coupled with Lightrooms brilliant Map feature where, if GPS is recorded you can see all your shot locations on a world map. However the Canon GP-E2 (I have a 7D) is quite expensive and I'm not sure if I always want a gadget on top of the camera with a loose lead plugged into the side. So I have discovered the Solocator App (for iPhone) and it is just brilliant. Costing under £3 one just takes a shot with the phone. It records the photo. You can add info easily such as a file number so you can link it to the shots you have shot on your camera later. It shows a birdseye view of the are you took the shot and in which dierection (in degrees or NEWSouth) you were facing. The exact Lat & Long cords. The altitude you were at. The text name of the area you took the photo eg East Sheen. You can email all this info if you want.
I know that you have to match this info manually later, but for £2 something I think it is brilliant, and fun, and very useful given that I always have my phone with me anyway.
http://solocator.com/

Jules
 
JulesJ said:
Having travelled a fair bit and taken many photographs I thought it would be good to have some sort of GPS on my camera. many times I have known roughly where I took a photo but not exactly and would like to. This coupled with Lightrooms brilliant Map feature where, if GPS is recorded you can see all your shot locations on a world map. However the Canon GP-E2 (I have a 7D) is quite expensive and I'm not sure if I always want a gadget on top of the camera with a loose lead plugged into the side. So I have discovered the Solocator App (for iPhone) and it is just brilliant. Costing under £3 one just takes a shot with the phone. It records the photo. You can add info easily such as a file number so you can link it to the shots you have shot on your camera later. It shows a birdseye view of the are you took the shot and in which dierection (in degrees or NEWSouth) you were facing. The exact Lat & Long cords. The altitude you were at. The text name of the area you took the photo eg East Sheen. You can email all this info if you want.
I know that you have to match this info manually later, but for £2 something I think it is brilliant, and fun, and very useful given that I always have my phone with me anyway.
http://solocator.com/

Jules
Click to expand...
 
If I take a photo on my phone with the location services active then the GPS coordinates are recorded with the photo. I can then import the photo into Lightroom and copy the GPS coordinates from that photo to the ones that I took with my real camera at the same location.
 
You can also do almost the same thing using Canon EOS map utility (which I assume comes with any Canon DLSR). You can import files without geotags and then add a landmark location based on a file which has a tag (i.e. your smart phone picture).

In case you don't have a geotag file you can take any image file and manually add location to that file using one of many iphone apps. I use MAPPR.
 
Last edited:
traveling these days as much as we do I too would like the e-z way to have GPS work with a DSLR without manually putting in the info or using an additonal app..

thinking out loud here and this has always been my question .. why can't camera companies like Canon with all its technology add a GPS chip to the camera similar to what smartphones have without severely draining the camera's battery....sure the phone's battery will drain faster but no where near the drain in a camera with GPS and it turns off when the phone is turned off not like in cameras with GPS...

my Galaxy Note 4 phone has GPS.. I can turn it on/off.. I leave mine on and still get thru the day without having to recharge more than once a day.. I can have the data turned off( when out of country) and the GPS still works allowing me to use it to automatically add to my photos as well as using Google Maps offline..

maybe someone out there knows the answer
 
JulesJ said:
Having travelled a fair bit and taken many photographs I thought it would be good to have some sort of GPS on my camera. many times I have known roughly where I took a photo but not exactly and would like to. This coupled with Lightrooms brilliant Map feature where, if GPS is recorded you can see all your shot locations on a world map. However the Canon GP-E2 (I have a 7D) is quite expensive and I'm not sure if I always want a gadget on top of the camera with a loose lead plugged into the side. So I have discovered the Solocator App (for iPhone) and it is just brilliant. Costing under £3 one just takes a shot with the phone. It records the photo. You can add info easily such as a file number so you can link it to the shots you have shot on your camera later. It shows a birdseye view of the are you took the shot and in which dierection (in degrees or NEWSouth) you were facing. The exact Lat & Long cords. The altitude you were at. The text name of the area you took the photo eg East Sheen. You can email all this info if you want.
I know that you have to match this info manually later, but for £2 something I think it is brilliant, and fun, and very useful given that I always have my phone with me anyway.
http://solocator.com/

Jules
Click to expand...
 
It was actually 75p (not just over £2) And I love the app. I hope it can be useful for some people.
 
I'm with you. It's something completely different: GPS on smartphone and on a camera.

When you enable GPS on your galaxy note you're not using it all the time, this is the reason why is not wasting the battery. It's polling the GPS signal just occasionally. When you shoot a picture or when you open maps etc.
Instead, when you ask your phone to track your position with a tracker app the phone need to use GPS antenna more often and this become battery greedy.
The phone need to wake lock from sleep and wakes up the CPU, memory, RAM, radio etc every time it logs your position. What's worst it's tracking you even when you're not shooting, for example. Not efficient.
Smartphone GPS tracking for a 24h/7d every minute tracking is not power efficient actually, is not enough efficient as it is a GPS module integrated in your camera, which will be on duty only when shooting and polling here and there sometimes.

At the end the best solution for geotagging your picture is: GPS built-in on the camera.

If this is not available, you'll need a GPS tracker. Download the tracks, associate with your picture. An heavy, ugly task.
 
mattz10 said:
I'm with you. It's something completely different: GPS on smartphone and on a camera.

When you enable GPS on your galaxy note you're not using it all the time, this is the reason why is not wasting the battery. It's polling the GPS signal just occasionally. When you shoot a picture or when you open maps etc.
Instead, when you ask your phone to track your position with a tracker app the phone need to use GPS antenna more often and this become battery greedy.
The phone need to wake lock from sleep and wakes up the CPU, memory, RAM, radio etc every time it logs your position. What's worst it's tracking you even when you're not shooting, for example. Not efficient.
Smartphone GPS tracking for a 24h/7d every minute tracking is not power efficient actually, is not enough efficient as it is a GPS module integrated in your camera, which will be on duty only when shooting and polling here and there sometimes.

At the end the best solution for geotagging your picture is: GPS built-in on the camera.

If this is not available, you'll need a GPS tracker. Download the tracks, associate with your picture. An heavy, ugly task.
Click to expand...
thanx for that detailed info :)
 
How much precision do you want for the GPS coordinates with every photo? For me, not much. Even though my 6D has a built in GPS it often takes too long to lock in. So, I just take the occasional photo with my phone for reference and copy the GPS coordinates from the appropriate photo to my real photos with Lightroom.
 
mattz10 said:
I'm with you. It's something completely different: GPS on smartphone and on a camera.

When you enable GPS on your galaxy note you're not using it all the time, this is the reason why is not wasting the battery. It's polling the GPS signal just occasionally. When you shoot a picture or when you open maps etc.
Instead, when you ask your phone to track your position with a tracker app the phone need to use GPS antenna more often and this become battery greedy.
The phone need to wake lock from sleep and wakes up the CPU, memory, RAM, radio etc every time it logs your position. What's worst it's tracking you even when you're not shooting, for example. Not efficient.
Smartphone GPS tracking for a 24h/7d every minute tracking is not power efficient actually, is not enough efficient as it is a GPS module integrated in your camera, which will be on duty only when shooting and polling here and there sometimes.

At the end the best solution for geotagging your picture is: GPS built-in on the camera.

If this is not available, you'll need a GPS tracker. Download the tracks, associate with your picture. An heavy, ugly task.
Click to expand...
Presumably Solocator only uses extra battery power when you use it and shoot a scene. Therefore very little battery use.
 
Jeff Peterman said:
How much precision do you want for the GPS coordinates with every photo? For me, not much. Even though my 6D has a built in GPS it often takes too long to lock in. So, I just take the occasional photo with my phone for reference and copy the GPS coordinates from the appropriate photo to my real photos with Lightroom.
Click to expand...
Exactly. Solocator fits this bill, and its fun.
 
Jeff Peterman said:
How much precision do you want for the GPS coordinates with every photo? For me, not much. Even though my 6D has a built in GPS it often takes too long to lock in. So, I just take the occasional photo with my phone for reference and copy the GPS coordinates from the appropriate photo to my real photos with Lightroom.
Click to expand...
 
Stakeouttoo said:
traveling these days as much as we do I too would like the e-z way to have GPS work with a DSLR without manually putting in the info or using an additonal app..

thinking out loud here and this has always been my question .. why can't camera companies like Canon with all its technology add a GPS chip to the camera similar to what smartphones have without severely draining the camera's battery....sure the phone's battery will drain faster but no where near the drain in a camera with GPS and it turns off when the phone is turned off not like in cameras with GPS...

my Galaxy Note 4 phone has GPS.. I can turn it on/off.. I leave mine on and still get thru the day without having to recharge more than once a day.. I can have the data turned off( when out of country) and the GPS still works allowing me to use it to automatically add to my photos as well as using Google Maps offline..

maybe someone out there knows the answer
Click to expand...
 
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