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Why no GPS in EM-1 ii?

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Oly knows how to do GPS. My sub-$400 TG-3 has GPS, altitude and a compass feature.

Among the host of details we can access from or EXIF data, I can see how GPS would be useful/critical for some users — and certainly in the future for archival purposes.
 
Dr_Jon, You're right. I think that'd be good way to resolve the situation.

======

mattz10, Olympus have GPS in the TG-4 series camera. So Olympus have good experience with this technology. For whatever reason though, this same technical expertise was not included in the E-M1 Mark II. I only pointed out the physics of the situation.

I should add Apple's advice for recalibration of the Watch 2 is to -

1. Go to a flat, open outdoor area that offers good GPS reception and clear skies.

2. Walk or run for 20 minutes.

Now I don't really think a photographer is interested to leave, for example, an indoor sporting event, go & find an area of good GPS reception & walk around for 20 minutes for it to calibrate properly & then return to the event.

Oh & not to forget that Apple presumes its daylight & the weather's good when you need to do this. What if it's wintertime, pitch dark & freezing cold. There's no need for all this wandering about if you have a proper size working GPS antenna. A signal of (-120db) is incredibly weak & amplification does not mean signal distortion is filtered out. Hence the need for a proper working antenna or wasting time to find an area of good reception plus the 20 minutes.

Also Apple presume the watch is always on but this is not so with a camera when the photographer is preserving power by switching it off or the battery is flat & a replacement is needed. In either case upon powering back up the GPS needs to recalibrate & a photographer wants the fastest calibration possible.
 
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mattz10 said:
Marcus Sundman said:
mattz10 said:
Marcus Sundman said:
mattz10 said:
I'm not buying the camera because of missing built-in GPS.
Click to expand...
You haven't really used on-camera GPSes much, have you? They are very bad. Even lumixes, which use AGPS by manually downloading AGPS-data, are slow and inaccurate. You end up waiting for GPS locks and when you don't keep an eye on the GPS data you'll get pictures with outdated (i.e., incorrect) location data, which is even worse than useless. And when you swap batteries in your camera (which you'll have to do more often now that the GPS is using battery as well) you'll lose the lock and have to re-aquire it, which means waiting.. often for a long time. This can be very, very frustrating.

I love the idea of having a GPS on the camera (and I'd like to have a compass and inclination data included as well), but so far it hasn't been any decent solution by any manufacturer ever.
Click to expand...
Marcus, none of what you wrote is happening in real life.
Click to expand...
All of that is happening in real life.
mattz10 said:
Having 0,5% of wrong geotagged picture of my entire archive is an issue? If you have some kind of obsessive-compulsive disorder, yes.
Click to expand...
I would estimate that close to 50% of my photos are more or less wrongly geotagged. Maybe I'm not obsessive-compulsive enough to wait for the GPS lock before I snap away. Maybe I should update my AGPS-data more often. Any which way I don't use an on-board GPS anymore because of these issues.
Click to expand...
50% of wrong geotagged pictures? Ok, you're doing it wrong or... you're GPS module is broken.
Click to expand...
I was wondering how others use GPS data. This dialogue highlights the difference.

I would only want to use GPS data to get a rough idea in what country or state the picture was taken. My phone or camera would only need to get the location once every few hours for that. It seems that Mattz10 uses it in the same way. If the geo location is within a couple of miles of my actual location, that is good enough for me.

Other people may want to know exactly on what street corner the photo was taken. I assume that Marcus considers 50% of the photos incorrectly geotagged because it is not within 50 feet of his actual location.

It seems that cameras and apps that check for geo location every 5 seconds are designed for the second scenario. Unfortunately that drains the battery to get a level of accuracy that I don't need. I just checked the Panasonic app and the longest interval that you can set for checking location is 60 seconds. Hopefully they will update that to allow at least 1 hour intervals so I can leave on all the time.
 
OzRay said:
What I do is explained here: http://australianimage.com.au/wordpress/index.php/where-did-i-take-that-photograph/ . It's easy and effective no matter where you go.
Click to expand...
IIRC the Olympus app pretty much does the same thing. It keeps track of your location, and you sync the phone to the camera to tag the GPS coordinates

You can also just get a handheld GPS, and take a picture of it. ;)

Anyway, I've changed my mind on this, they should have at least offered it with a switch to turn it on and off. Ah well.

 
SpinOne said:
OzRay said:
What I do is explained here: http://australianimage.com.au/wordpress/index.php/where-did-i-take-that-photograph/ . It's easy and effective no matter where you go.
Click to expand...
IIRC the Olympus app pretty much does the same thing. It keeps track of your location, and you sync the phone to the camera to tag the GPS coordinates

You can also just get a handheld GPS, and take a picture of it. ;)

Anyway, I've changed my mind on this, they should have at least offered it with a switch to turn it on and off. Ah well.
Click to expand...
I could do something similar with my mobile phone, which I did try, and that simply involves taking a photo with my mobile phone at the same location as taking a photo with my camera. But of course I kept forgetting to do that and so lost track of places.

The tablet/data logger and the software means I don't have to remember to do two things at once. :)

--
Thoughts, Musings, Ideas and Images from South Gippsland
http://australianimage.com.au/wordpress/
 
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Colin K. Work said:
A surprising omission from the new camera IMHO.

I think it was said in the past that one reason for not having it in the EM-1 was to conserve battery life.

So now we have a big new battery (making my current collection obsolete, cheers Oly) but no benefit for the stills shooter (and frankly, the old battery had more than enough power).

Perhaps GPS is seem as a bit of a gimmick, but I've just spent some quality time with my image catalogue trying to get up to date with some captions and keywording. So I did a little calculation.

Based on my average annual shoot as a semi-pro, I have about 30k "keepers" per year (by no means a lot by many other's standards). If I estimate it takes 5 seconds per frame to manually add location data to an image, then over a 3 year camera life time, that amounts to about 120hrs. Given UK figures for an average working week, and at the current minimum wage, that means the GPS feature alone would pretty much cover the cost of the camera!

Of course 5 seconds a frame is a bit arbitrary. Some days I may have 1000 frames all from the same location, other days (say from a long hike) I may have frames from numerous locations which need to to tediously looked up. But regardless of how much, GPS is a time saver, and time=money.
Click to expand...
GPS built into a camera is not a pro feature.

Built in GPS is similar to built in microphones, for pro use an external device is needed.

If you need pro quality GPS use an external GPS tracker to record your position and synchronise this position to the image files, as a videographer does with his audio.

You can synchronise a day's worth of photos with only a few key strokes.

An external GPS tracker has better aerials, battery power for continuous use and will locate from multiple satellite constellations which results in better positional accuracy.

Smartphones can be used as external GPS trackers but aren't as good as dedicated GPS trackers.

Putting basic GPS in the EM1ii would have implications on the shape of the body (aerials), battery life and cost. The EM1ii is already expensive. Why put off potential customers by charging for another feature they won't use when there are better existing options for those that do need GPS.
 
Marcus Sundman said:
You can get the GPS position from your phone much quicker and more accurately. (Even Lumix cameras, known for their not-too-bad gps implementation, position themselves wherever, and take forever to lock/update etc. And incorrect location data is even worse than useless.)

However, I want the camera to embed into the exif tag which way it is pointing! When I'm on top of a mountain and take pictures it's not very helpful to know where exactly I am, but I'd rather know where the subject on my screen is. Currently I have to figure it out by matching the timestamp to the angle of the shadows, and if there's no sun then it can get really difficult.
Click to expand...
I would go further. If the camera knows where it is, which way it is pointing (compass and gyro sensors), lens focal length and the focus distance it should be possible to work out the GPS position of the subject.
 
I would really like to see a GPS + compass (for the orientation) in the camera. So that you can look and search your photos like this:



6f3d3b84083e4d2f876171e3eaaee5dd.jpg
 
Peter 1745 said:
Colin K. Work said:
A surprising omission from the new camera IMHO.

I think it was said in the past that one reason for not having it in the EM-1 was to conserve battery life.

So now we have a big new battery (making my current collection obsolete, cheers Oly) but no benefit for the stills shooter (and frankly, the old battery had more than enough power).

Perhaps GPS is seem as a bit of a gimmick, but I've just spent some quality time with my image catalogue trying to get up to date with some captions and keywording. So I did a little calculation.

Based on my average annual shoot as a semi-pro, I have about 30k "keepers" per year (by no means a lot by many other's standards). If I estimate it takes 5 seconds per frame to manually add location data to an image, then over a 3 year camera life time, that amounts to about 120hrs. Given UK figures for an average working week, and at the current minimum wage, that means the GPS feature alone would pretty much cover the cost of the camera!

Of course 5 seconds a frame is a bit arbitrary. Some days I may have 1000 frames all from the same location, other days (say from a long hike) I may have frames from numerous locations which need to to tediously looked up. But regardless of how much, GPS is a time saver, and time=money.
Click to expand...
GPS built into a camera is not a pro feature.

Built in GPS is similar to built in microphones, for pro use an external device is needed.

If you need pro quality GPS use an external GPS tracker to record your position and synchronise this position to the image files, as a videographer does with his audio.

You can synchronise a day's worth of photos with only a few key strokes.

An external GPS tracker has better aerials, battery power for continuous use and will locate from multiple satellite constellations which results in better positional accuracy.

Smartphones can be used as external GPS trackers but aren't as good as dedicated GPS trackers.

Putting basic GPS in the EM1ii would have implications on the shape of the body (aerials), battery life and cost. The EM1ii is already expensive. Why put off potential customers by charging for another feature they won't use when there are better existing options for those that do need GPS.
Click to expand...
 
OzRay said:
SpinOne said:
OzRay said:
What I do is explained here: http://australianimage.com.au/wordpress/index.php/where-did-i-take-that-photograph/ . It's easy and effective no matter where you go.
Click to expand...
IIRC the Olympus app pretty much does the same thing. It keeps track of your location, and you sync the phone to the camera to tag the GPS coordinates

You can also just get a handheld GPS, and take a picture of it. ;)

Anyway, I've changed my mind on this, they should have at least offered it with a switch to turn it on and off. Ah well.
Click to expand...
I could do something similar with my mobile phone, which I did try, and that simply involves taking a photo with my mobile phone at the same location as taking a photo with my camera. But of course I kept forgetting to do that and so lost track of places.

The tablet/data logger and the software means I don't have to remember to do two things at once. :)

--
Thoughts, Musings, Ideas and Images from South Gippsland
http://australianimage.com.au/wordpress/
Click to expand...
Care about tracking yourself with smartphone is a real pain in the ass (which I will never be involved into), but your procedure can be even more painful :)
 
Last edited:
The Oly smartphone app works fine for me. Switch on the log at the start of shooting, at the end of the shoot sync with the camera using wifi to geotag all the photos can be done anytime. The app doesn't impact the phone battery too much either.
 
mattz10 said:
Peter 1745 said:
Colin K. Work said:
A surprising omission from the new camera IMHO.

I think it was said in the past that one reason for not having it in the EM-1 was to conserve battery life.

So now we have a big new battery (making my current collection obsolete, cheers Oly) but no benefit for the stills shooter (and frankly, the old battery had more than enough power).

Perhaps GPS is seem as a bit of a gimmick, but I've just spent some quality time with my image catalogue trying to get up to date with some captions and keywording. So I did a little calculation.

Based on my average annual shoot as a semi-pro, I have about 30k "keepers" per year (by no means a lot by many other's standards). If I estimate it takes 5 seconds per frame to manually add location data to an image, then over a 3 year camera life time, that amounts to about 120hrs. Given UK figures for an average working week, and at the current minimum wage, that means the GPS feature alone would pretty much cover the cost of the camera!

Of course 5 seconds a frame is a bit arbitrary. Some days I may have 1000 frames all from the same location, other days (say from a long hike) I may have frames from numerous locations which need to to tediously looked up. But regardless of how much, GPS is a time saver, and time=money.
Click to expand...
GPS built into a camera is not a pro feature.

Built in GPS is similar to built in microphones, for pro use an external device is needed.

If you need pro quality GPS use an external GPS tracker to record your position and synchronise this position to the image files, as a videographer does with his audio.

You can synchronise a day's worth of photos with only a few key strokes.

An external GPS tracker has better aerials, battery power for continuous use and will locate from multiple satellite constellations which results in better positional accuracy.

Smartphones can be used as external GPS trackers but aren't as good as dedicated GPS trackers.

Putting basic GPS in the EM1ii would have implications on the shape of the body (aerials), battery life and cost. The EM1ii is already expensive. Why put off potential customers by charging for another feature they won't use when there are better existing options for those that do need GPS.

--
Regards,
Peter
'Keep taking the photos'
Click to expand...
facepalm... built-in gps and built-in mic have in common one only thing: they're both built-in.

Here you can enrich your knowledge about "pro":

https://www.dpreview.com/products/s...SLR,MidSizeSLR,LargeSLR&paramSpecsGPS=BuiltIn
Click to expand...
Funny you should link that. There are only 7 IL cameras from the last 3 years that have GPS built-in, and only 15 total out of 357 have it. It seems to show the trend of camera makers moving away from built-in GPS since around 2014, and how irrelevant the feature is to the modern camera market (only Canon seems to be holding out).

Here's the cameras on that list that have dropped built-in GPS in their successor model or the model was discontinued:

D5300: D5500, D5600

Galaxy NX: no successor

a99: a99 II

a77: a77 II

a65: no successor

a55: a57

If you include compact P&S (decidedly not "pro"), I believe built-in GPS is more prevalent there (my P&S camera has it).

The overall trend seems to be a move to Bluetooth LE and offloading GPS to the phone.
 
Last edited:
JakeJY said:
mattz10 said:
Peter 1745 said:
Colin K. Work said:
A surprising omission from the new camera IMHO.

I think it was said in the past that one reason for not having it in the EM-1 was to conserve battery life.

So now we have a big new battery (making my current collection obsolete, cheers Oly) but no benefit for the stills shooter (and frankly, the old battery had more than enough power).

Perhaps GPS is seem as a bit of a gimmick, but I've just spent some quality time with my image catalogue trying to get up to date with some captions and keywording. So I did a little calculation.

Based on my average annual shoot as a semi-pro, I have about 30k "keepers" per year (by no means a lot by many other's standards). If I estimate it takes 5 seconds per frame to manually add location data to an image, then over a 3 year camera life time, that amounts to about 120hrs. Given UK figures for an average working week, and at the current minimum wage, that means the GPS feature alone would pretty much cover the cost of the camera!

Of course 5 seconds a frame is a bit arbitrary. Some days I may have 1000 frames all from the same location, other days (say from a long hike) I may have frames from numerous locations which need to to tediously looked up. But regardless of how much, GPS is a time saver, and time=money.
Click to expand...
GPS built into a camera is not a pro feature.

Built in GPS is similar to built in microphones, for pro use an external device is needed.

If you need pro quality GPS use an external GPS tracker to record your position and synchronise this position to the image files, as a videographer does with his audio.

You can synchronise a day's worth of photos with only a few key strokes.

An external GPS tracker has better aerials, battery power for continuous use and will locate from multiple satellite constellations which results in better positional accuracy.

Smartphones can be used as external GPS trackers but aren't as good as dedicated GPS trackers.

Putting basic GPS in the EM1ii would have implications on the shape of the body (aerials), battery life and cost. The EM1ii is already expensive. Why put off potential customers by charging for another feature they won't use when there are better existing options for those that do need GPS.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
mattz10 said:
JakeJY said:
mattz10 said:
Peter 1745 said:
Colin K. Work said:
A surprising omission from the new camera IMHO.

I think it was said in the past that one reason for not having it in the EM-1 was to conserve battery life.

So now we have a big new battery (making my current collection obsolete, cheers Oly) but no benefit for the stills shooter (and frankly, the old battery had more than enough power).

Perhaps GPS is seem as a bit of a gimmick, but I've just spent some quality time with my image catalogue trying to get up to date with some captions and keywording. So I did a little calculation.

Based on my average annual shoot as a semi-pro, I have about 30k "keepers" per year (by no means a lot by many other's standards). If I estimate it takes 5 seconds per frame to manually add location data to an image, then over a 3 year camera life time, that amounts to about 120hrs. Given UK figures for an average working week, and at the current minimum wage, that means the GPS feature alone would pretty much cover the cost of the camera!

Of course 5 seconds a frame is a bit arbitrary. Some days I may have 1000 frames all from the same location, other days (say from a long hike) I may have frames from numerous locations which need to to tediously looked up. But regardless of how much, GPS is a time saver, and time=money.
Click to expand...
GPS built into a camera is not a pro feature.

Built in GPS is similar to built in microphones, for pro use an external device is needed.

If you need pro quality GPS use an external GPS tracker to record your position and synchronise this position to the image files, as a videographer does with his audio.

You can synchronise a day's worth of photos with only a few key strokes.

An external GPS tracker has better aerials, battery power for continuous use and will locate from multiple satellite constellations which results in better positional accuracy.

Smartphones can be used as external GPS trackers but aren't as good as dedicated GPS trackers.

Putting basic GPS in the EM1ii would have implications on the shape of the body (aerials), battery life and cost. The EM1ii is already expensive. Why put off potential customers by charging for another feature they won't use when there are better existing options for those that do need GPS.

--
Regards,
Peter
'Keep taking the photos'
Click to expand...
facepalm... built-in gps and built-in mic have in common one only thing: they're both built-in.

Here you can enrich your knowledge about "pro":

https://www.dpreview.com/products/s...SLR,MidSizeSLR,LargeSLR&paramSpecsGPS=BuiltIn
Click to expand...
Funny you should link that. There are only 7 IL cameras from the last 3 years that have GPS built-in, and only 15 total out of 357 have it. It seems to show the trend of camera makers moving away from built-in GPS since around 2014, and how irrelevant the feature is to the modern camera market (only Canon seems to be holding out).

Here's the cameras on that list that have dropped built-in GPS in their successor model or the model was discontinued:

D5300: D5500, D5600

Galaxy NX: no successor

a99: a99 II

a77: a77 II

a65: no successor

a55: a57

If you include compact P&S (decidedly not "pro"), I believe built-in GPS is more prevalent there (my P&S camera has it).

The overall trend seems to be a move to Bluetooth LE and offloading GPS to the phone.
Click to expand...
So, you're saying that not all the cameras have GPS built-in. Great shot.

There are pro camera with built-in GPS yet. It's on Canon and Pentax flagship. So it's not true that GPS built in is not a PRO feature. If "PRO" is something which worth.
Click to expand...
Not really, I'm saying that it's a feature that is largely irrelevant to the modern market given cameras that had them are dropping them. This is a trend I noticed personally, because the latest successors to the cameras I have (A900 to S9300 and A5500/A5600) have completely dropped built-in GPS.

Also almost half of that short list are low to mid range "prosumer" cameras (I count 6-7 of the out of your list of 15). It's glaring that none of the Nikon "Pro" cameras have it (something I didn't' know before).

If I include the fixed lens cameras, there are way more consumer models that have built-in GPS:

https://www.dpreview.com/products/s...SLR,MidSizeSLR,LargeSLR&paramSpecsGPS=BuiltIn

Built-in GPS seems to matter more for the consumer fixed-lens market.

Basically, I'm not see how not having it is going to affect EM-1 II sales in any significant way (largely because there are other simple alternatives that can do the same thing), nor do I see it as a differentiating feature for what makes a "Pro" camera. Other stuff like full weather proofing, dual control dials, high res/low lag EVF, dual card slots are much bigger differentiators.
 
Last edited:
mattz10 said:
OzRay said:
SpinOne said:
OzRay said:
What I do is explained here: http://australianimage.com.au/wordpress/index.php/where-did-i-take-that-photograph/ . It's easy and effective no matter where you go.
Click to expand...
IIRC the Olympus app pretty much does the same thing. It keeps track of your location, and you sync the phone to the camera to tag the GPS coordinates

You can also just get a handheld GPS, and take a picture of it. ;)

Anyway, I've changed my mind on this, they should have at least offered it with a switch to turn it on and off. Ah well.
Click to expand...
I could do something similar with my mobile phone, which I did try, and that simply involves taking a photo with my mobile phone at the same location as taking a photo with my camera. But of course I kept forgetting to do that and so lost track of places.

The tablet/data logger and the software means I don't have to remember to do two things at once. :)
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
mattz10 said:
mattz10 wrote:>
Click to expand...
mattz10 said:
There are pro camera with built-in GPS yet. It's on Canon and Pentax flagship. So it's not true that GPS built in is not a PRO feature. If "PRO" is something which worth.
Click to expand...
There are plenty of features on "pro" cameras that many would consider as not being at "pro" level.

My point was that built in GPS is not very useful if you really need accurate GPS, just as built in microphones are not very useful if you need quality sound. Yes, built in GPS can be useful at times but is not completely dependable.

For me any "pro" feature must be one that is completely reliable and predictable. In camera GPS isn't.

Different manufacturers implement it differently but generally the antennas are small or partially obscured by the camera body; the electronics are not tuned for GPS performance but are tuned for prolonged battery life; the camera is slow to relocate after being turned off for a while. I want to be able to turn on my camera and take a picture instantly sure in the knowledge that it will be tagged with the correct co-ordinates. Using an external GPS device gives me this. Built in GPS doesn't, which is why I don't consider it a "pro" feature.

There is nothing wrong with liking built in GPS if it works for you, just don't try telling me it's good enough for mine. It isn't.
 
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