Why no GPS in EM-1 ii?

[OzRay]

I suggested at least a year ago that an optional grip could provide unique functionalities that wouldn't affect the basic camera design, GPS was one of those suggestions. A small grip (or base plate) could provide GPS as well as it's own internal battery.

 

[Marcus Sundman]

Your calculations are wrong. It does not take 5 seconds per image on average. You do it in batches and it takes a few seconds per batch. So a few seconds for each photoshoot. (You writing about it here on dpr takes much more time.)

OK, I'm not saying this is an exact calculation, and yes, you can do it in batches. If all the shots are in the same location.

No! You import your whole GPS log from the whole day, with thousands of photos in several hundred different locations. That's ONE batch. Only a couple of seconds per day.

Makes sense. Trialling a phone based logger right now.

Great! Once you get the log from your camera you load all your photos and your logs into the software that matches GPS logs to photos and press the button and you'll have accurate location tags in all your photos, across hundreds of different locations, and it took you a few seconds.

 

[Colin K. Work]

Your calculations are wrong. It does not take 5 seconds per image on average. You do it in batches and it takes a few seconds per batch. So a few seconds for each photoshoot. (You writing about it here on dpr takes much more time.)

OK, I'm not saying this is an exact calculation, and yes, you can do it in batches. If all the shots are in the same location.

No! You import your whole GPS log from the whole day, with thousands of photos in several hundred different locations. That's ONE batch. Only a couple of seconds per day.

Yes I know that - I was talking about without having a log file. If you want to read through the rest, the discussion is about whether the logfile should come from a separate device or built in to the camera.

Makes sense. Trialling a phone based logger right now.

Great! Once you get the log from your camera you load all your photos and your logs into the software that matches GPS logs to photos and press the button and you'll have accurate location tags in all your photos, across hundreds of different locations, and it took you a few seconds.

Yes, but ... you'll have to read the rest of the thread to see the issues

 

[Marcus Sundman]

Your calculations are wrong. It does not take 5 seconds per image on average. You do it in batches and it takes a few seconds per batch. So a few seconds for each photoshoot. (You writing about it here on dpr takes much more time.)

OK, I'm not saying this is an exact calculation, and yes, you can do it in batches. If all the shots are in the same location.

No! You import your whole GPS log from the whole day, with thousands of photos in several hundred different locations. That's ONE batch. Only a couple of seconds per day.

Yes I know that - I was talking about without having a log file. If you want to read through the rest, the discussion is about whether the logfile should come from a separate device or built in to the camera.

Yeah, I agree with you that it's way, way too tedious to do it manually without any GPS log files.

I've used on-camera GPSes and I just prefer off-camera ones. The on-camera ones are slow, unreliable and they use battery, and you have to wait for the GPS lock when you switch battery in the camera, or when you turn on the camera in the first place, etc etc.

Way too many problems with on-camera GPSes, and unfortunately they are not easily solvable. (You'd need things like secondary batteries so you could swap one while you use another, etc.)

 

[mattz10]

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.

 

[mattz10]

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.

On my Sony GPS built-in camera there's even compass information on exif.

I don't know if is GPS based, calculated by the path you're following or what.

Anyway excellent idea, a compass too should be another important thing to add.

 

[mattz10]

It would be a battery killer.

 

[mattz10]

Hi ..

Every one nowaday has a mobile phone with them ....... with GPS included.

There are sooo many Apps to store that GPS pos. and link it to your data ..no need for GPS in camera .

For the few ..... who realy want to see where they did shoot a bird ! :-D

Wrong. Tracking your position all-day long IS really battery heavy job.

Geotagging your pictures with built-in on camera GPS is not.

 

[mattz10]

There are lots of ways to collect GPS data, but all require transferring data to the image Exif. That's the step I want to eliminate.

Why? That takes virtually no time, so why would you want to eliminate that? Waiting for your camera to get a GPS lock with its non-connected, non-assisted on-board GPS ends up taking thousands of times more time. Why would you prefer the time-consuming low-quality over the quick high-quality alternative?

It takes time. Period. Not virtually.

 

[Marcus Sundman]

I'm not buying the camera because of missing built-in GPS.

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.

 

[mattz10]

I'm not buying the camera because of missing built-in GPS.

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.

Marcus, none of what you wrote is happening in real life.

Having 0,5% of wrong geotagged picture of my entire archive is an issue? If you have some kind of obsessive-compulsive disorder, yes.

Changing battery "often" because of GPS, that's just rubbish, with respect.

And yes, I've been using GPS built-in camera for years, indeed now I can search among my huge archive just typing a city name, a country name, a lake name and so on.

 

[Marcus Sundman]

I'm not buying the camera because of missing built-in GPS.

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.

Marcus, none of what you wrote is happening in real life.

All of that is happening in real life.

Having 0,5% of wrong geotagged picture of my entire archive is an issue? If you have some kind of obsessive-compulsive disorder, yes.

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.

Changing battery "often" because of GPS, that's just rubbish, with respect.

I didn't say that. I said that you have to do it more often. How much more often depends on how much you use it. Leave it alone for a day or two and the battery will be dead when you pick it up even though you haven't used it at all, but just because the GPS was active.

 

[Marcus Sundman]

There are lots of ways to collect GPS data, but all require transferring data to the image Exif. That's the step I want to eliminate.

Why? That takes virtually no time, so why would you want to eliminate that? Waiting for your camera to get a GPS lock with its non-connected, non-assisted on-board GPS ends up taking thousands of times more time. Why would you prefer the time-consuming low-quality over the quick high-quality alternative?

It takes time. Period. Not virtually.

Of course it's not exactly zero time, but it's a few seconds per batch of thousands of photos.

And my point was also that you waiting for your camera to get a lock after swapping batteries will end up taking more time.

 

[OzRay]

And then people will be wanting the camera to have a SIM card, so that the camera can used A-GPS to lock on faster, or when GPS signals are poor. Afterall, a smart phone has this, why not a camera?

 

[MJohns]

I believe the wireless app does allow this. I tried it and it did work. However, I do not use it because to use it requires that your cell phone is running the app. Not sure if you can use the camera normally while the app is working in the camera.

Also, your cell wireless is not useful while the camera is connected (for anything else). A "micro-app" via bluetooth would seem a good option as others mentioned.

My current solution is to make sure the time on the camera and cell phone were synchronized, and shoot a picture from time to time on the cell. They auto merge in lightroom when imported, and give you location checks interspersed with your pictures. Clunky, but easy to make work with any camera that time-stamps the digital image.

 

[MJohns]

...

Colin, you can use Lightroom to synchronize your images with a GPX track log file.

In a single operation you may synchronize and tag bulk numbers of images against a GPX file. On a recent 2-week trip I logged a new GPX file each day on my smart phone. On return, after copying the 14 GPX files to the PC , I used Lr to tag over 10,000 images in a few minutes.

IMO, the advantage of using an external GPS device is that it will track your path even if the camera is off

Peter

Thanks for the excellent suggestion. For those of us who just heard of this from you, could you please supply a "how to" answer:

a. creating a GPX track log file on your phone,
b. synchronizing using lightroom.

(OK, I could look this up myself, but you could save some of us some time.)

Thanks.

 

[OzRay]

Thanks for the excellent suggestion. For those of us who just heard of this from you, could you please supply a "how to" answer:

a. creating a GPX track log file on your phone,
b. synchronizing using lightroom.

(OK, I could look this up myself, but you could save some of us some time.)

Thanks.

This thread has actually prompted me to write a story on doing just that, but using Microsoft Pro Photo Tools, as I tried Lightroom, but I just didn't like the way it worked for some reason. It won't appear until next Friday.

But basically you need an app that will record your movements and save them as a GPX file. There are several about, especially for Android and iPhones, less for Windows phones.

Once you have a GPX file, all that you need to do is import that to the program of choice and do the same with photos. Then just get the program to match the time stamp of the track with that of the photos and insert the coordinates into the photos.

Pro Photo Tools does this in seconds.

 

[Messier Object]

...

Colin, you can use Lightroom to synchronize your images with a GPX track log file.

In a single operation you may synchronize and tag bulk numbers of images against a GPX file. On a recent 2-week trip I logged a new GPX file each day on my smart phone. On return, after copying the 14 GPX files to the PC , I used Lr to tag over 10,000 images in a few minutes.

IMO, the advantage of using an external GPS device is that it will track your path even if the camera is off

Peter

Thanks for the excellent suggestion. For those of us who just heard of this from you, could you please supply a "how to" answer:

a. creating a GPX track log file on your phone,

I use an android app called GPS Logger. Runs fine on my old Samsung S2. Need to remember to set the date/time to match your camera, but if you forget don't reset the time on the phone or camera without starting a new log file. The app has options for how often it logs position in time or distance intervals. Saves the log file to the phone, with options to automatically upload to cloud or send to other destination as backup.

b. synchronizing using light-room

Copy the GPX file(s) from the phone to the PC

in Lr highlight the images, go to the Map module and at bottom of screen there is an option to load a GPS track log file. It also has a slider to time-shift for matching of time zones. Tag the files. Lr will show the GPS track overlaid on the Google Map and place all of the tagged images. You can see your path(s) and where/how many shots you took.

(OK, I could look this up myself, but you could save some of us some time.)

Thanks.

 

[TN Args]

Link

 

[OzRay]

Reflects very much what I've written in my blog.