EOS R5, change GPS coordinate format?

drsnoopy wrote:

Sittatunga wrote:

drsnoopy wrote:

robgendreau wrote:

MarkDavo wrote:

Took delivery of my R5 yesterday and am looking at the GPS data recording.

I can't see it myself but does anyone know if it is possible to change the GPS coordinate format? For ease of transcribing I prefer to use Decimal Degrees, DDD.DDDDDD.

Thanks,

R5 Manual page 708

I am not sure what you're using to add the coordinates; I use the Canon GPS dongle (GP2? can't remember).

I ran one of my geocoded files through exiftool and saw different formats, per below.

exiftool:

37 deg 59' 53.45" N

Bridge:

37,59.8909N

Copied from XML in the sidecar:

37,59.891N

If I run exiftool on the image file with the -n option I get:

37.9981816666667

So it might depend on what you choose to use to view the coordinates. And note the decimal one seems to be a bit more precise than the first, so I'm not sure what the actual values might be in the raw file itself.

I think your final decimal value is simply calculated from the first value in ddd.mm.ss.ss, to several decimal places more than is necessary. It doesn’t imply greater accuracy.

I don’t believe you can change the format that’s registered by the camera body, I recall it being the same format on my 5D4 with built-in GPS. But I have never used a GP-E2 so can’t compare.

Lightroom also uses the ddd.mm.ss.ss format, but here is an article with methods of conversion.

https://havecamerawilltravel.com/lightroom/lightroom-gps-coordinates-convert-decimal/

What do you need it for? Software such as GIS based packages usually have an option to enter the location data in a choice of formats.

At this number of decimal points, the precision of the readout isn't really connected with its accuracy. I've never seen the GPStest app on my phone give a fix accuracy of better than about 4m, which where I live is +0.13" (0.00036°) latitude, +0.23" (0.000063°) longitude. (And your choice of geoid (model of the earth's curvature) can affect your reported position by more than that.)

Basically, once you get down to (very roughly) 0.1" or 0.0001° you're giving your position more precisely than you can measure it with a portable GPS. By the time you get down to 13 decimal places you're getting close to having to decide which molecule of your GPS you're using to fix your position.

As I said above, that is a calculated figure, *not* a more accurate figure. 37 deg 59’ 53.45” if converted to a decimal value on my calculator comes out at 54.95361666666667. It’s the *same* coordinate, not a more accurate one.

It comes out as 37.9982° on mine to the nearest few metres on the ground. Any further decimal points are meaningless if not spurious.