Geotagging and Canon Camera Connect

[Chepe Nicoli]

I was recently on a trip and was using the Camera Connect geolocation feature, now, I imported all my photos to Lightroom hoping to see that the geolocation information was already in the files.

It was not like that, I've been looking for a way to add information to the images, but I can not find how. There is a function to "Send location information"... send to where? To the photos? To some file to later import it to Lightroom and geo tag the photos?

Who has had experience in that? Any help would be appreciated.

--
www.nicoli.com.mx

 

[Dave Lasker]

My understanding is that "Begin logging" causes the Camera Connect app to keep a log of your locations vs. time. This log is stored internally in the app. You do not have to be connected to the camera while your locations are being logged. I am not aware of any way to access this log from outside of the app.

Later, you connect your phone to your camera via wi-fi or bluetooth, and then click the "Send location information" button. The timestamps in the log will be matched up with the timestamps on the image files, and the image files in the camera will be geotagged with the locations in the log files.

When you eventually download your images from the camera of SD card, they should be geotagged. For this to work correctly, the time set in your camera and on your phone musts be the same.

Disclaimer: I've not actually tried this.

Edit: I tried this, and it does not work. When I connect my phone to my RP and tap "Send Location Information" on my phone, I get an error message that the function is not supported on my camera.

Sorry for the bad info.

 

[AliZeeshan]

Hi Chepe:

I've been using bluetooth connection to my iPhone to get hold of location data, and its working fine.

In addition to what Dave mentioned, on EOS R you would have to set Smartphone as the "Select GPS device". Also, the second option of sending location data via WiFi is turned off on my phone.

Hope this helps.

Ali

 

[User5942872967]

Hi Chepe:
I've been using bluetooth connection to my iPhone to get hold of location data, and its working fine.
In addition to what Dave mentioned, on EOS R you would have to set Smartphone as the "Select GPS device". Also, the second option of sending location data via WiFi is turned off on my phone.
Hope this helps.
Ali

I tried it but I noticed google photos doesn’t recognize the tags.

 

[Reza Raquib]

What AliZeeshan said is the only correct method on R and RP. With the Bluetooth connection active, the phone act as the GPS receiver. In fact when the camera is receiving GPS data you will see the GPS icon light up on the camera screen.

 

[Dave Lasker]

What AliZeeshan said is the only correct method on R and RP. With the Bluetooth connection active, the phone act as the GPS receiver. In fact when the camera is receiving GPS data you will see the GPS icon light up on the camera screen.

I agree. Sorry for my erroneous post earlier. I tried the "Set location information" button with my RP via wi-fi, and I got an error message that my camera was not supported. AliZeeshan's method works great!

 

[Chepe Nicoli]

Hi Chepe:
I've been using bluetooth connection to my iPhone to get hold of location data, and its working fine.
In addition to what Dave mentioned, on EOS R you would have to set Smartphone as the "Select GPS device". Also, the second option of sending location data via WiFi is turned off on my phone.
Hope this helps.
Ali

Thanks Dave, thank you Ali, fail!!!!....

If connected by bluetooh I got this screen:

If connected by WiFi I got this one.

In the past, I have used a iOS App with no problems: GeotagPhotos, now, I did trust Canon Camera Connect and cannot geotag?

--
www.nicoli.com.mx

 

[Dave Lasker]

Hi Chepe:
I've been using bluetooth connection to my iPhone to get hold of location data, and its working fine.
In addition to what Dave mentioned, on EOS R you would have to set Smartphone as the "Select GPS device". Also, the second option of sending location data via WiFi is turned off on my phone.
Hope this helps.
Ali

Thanks Dave, thank you Ali, fail!!!!....

In the past, I have used a iOS App with no problems: GeotagPhotos, now, I did trust Canon Camera Connect and cannot geotag?

My original post (which I admitted I had not tried) does not work. Sorry about that.

However, you can geotag in real time while shooting images by using the Canon Camera Connection App connected to your camera by Bluetooth. If you have an RP, see page 403 of the instructions. I just tried it and it works. If you have an R, search your manual for how to Geotag while using a smartphone. That is the method that Ali was trying to explain.

It sounds like you were trying to use the Canon Camera Connection App as a replacement for an app like GeotagPhotos, where you create a .gpx file and import it into Lightroom, where your GPS history is correlated with your images timestamps. That is not possible.

 

[Chepe Nicoli]

It sounds like you were trying to use the Canon Camera Connection App as a replacement for an app like GeotagPhotos, where you create a .gpx file and import it into Lightroom, where your GPS history is correlated with your images timestamps. That is not possible.

Not exactly, I mentioned it only to show how a third party app did the work.

I was expecting to have my photos already tagged. I will try what you say.

Thanks!

 

[Chepe Nicoli]

However, you can geotag in real time while shooting images by using the Canon Camera Connection App connected to your camera by Bluetooth. If you have an RP, see page 403 of the instructions. I just tried it and it works. If you have an R, search your manual for how to Geotag while using a smartphone. That is the method that Ali was trying to explain.

Yes, it works on the R, using bluetooth. Hope to find a way to recover the data I collected.

Best!!!

 

[Graham C F]

I have found this works well on the R. You just have to monitor that it is still working. As it warns on page 415 of the EOS R manual, if you turn the camera off, it can lose the GPS connection. I found that I needed to open the smartphone again to reconnect it. I’m not sure whether it would have done so by itself, if I had waited long enough.

When I was on a safari recently, I got into the habit of leaving the camera switched on all the time, albeit with power saving enabled. That seemed to be an effective way of maintaining the GPS connection, though I continued to monitor it. I was afraid the battery would run out on either the smartphone or the EOS R, but I never had a problem.

 

[JRET]

disclaimer: I don't have an R or RP (yet) but am using Camera Connect with an M50 and I think they function essentially the same.

read this discussion in the M forum as it may provide some answers/clues.

quick summary - the initial pairing of camera to phone is not exactly self-evident. Wifi is needed for setup then use bluetooth thereafter. I'm using a dedicated Android with no SIM card for GPS purposes and it has great battery life with everything turned off except for Camera Connect & bluetooth. I'm also turning off the camera between sessions and with only a couple of no-connects it has always reconnected rather quickly. Hope this helps.

 

[Chepe Nicoli]

First of all, thanks to everyone who helped me with my doubts.

Thinking about how to recover the data (on the Camera Connect App), I connected my iPhone to iTunes to see if the app offered the option of sharing documents, to my surprise I found Camera Connect allowed me to download a file called CCV2CoreData_01.sqlite.

Besides doing photography, I am a programmer so it was very pleasant to see that this ".sqlite" file is nothing else than a database file.

How the sqlite data looks

So I downloaded it and learned that this file had the information not from each one of the photos, but from the routes I did.

Lightroom accepts .gpx files for geolocation, what it does is compare the time at which the photograph was made and look for a correspondence in the .gpx route, when it is found, it adds the geolocation data to the image.

Of course, I searched the internet on how to properly format the .gpx files and with the database that I was able to download from the Canon App I was able to recreate my routes and I was finally able to geo-tag my photos.

One of my routes.

Canon Camera Connect should give the option to download a properly formatted .gpx file to be used in Lightroom or other programs in case a user needs it.

Finally, I already learned how to activate the geolocation in the App as Dave Lasker and others helped.

I hope this experience I had serves others.

Cheers!!!

 

[Graham C F]

A great addition to a travel diary, or for tagging individual photos. Thanks for sharing.

 

[User5942872967]

Hi Chepe:
I've been using bluetooth connection to my iPhone to get hold of location data, and its working fine.
In addition to what Dave mentioned, on EOS R you would have to set Smartphone as the "Select GPS device". Also, the second option of sending location data via WiFi is turned off on my phone.
Hope this helps.
Ali

I tried it but I noticed google photos doesn’t recognize the tags.

i noticed that if you use camera connect app to transfer the pictures to my iphones, the geotags don't come across. But when i copy the picture to google photos, the geotags do come across. kind of silly that camera connect doesn't transfer it over.

i wonder if you use the GPS dongle would it auto transfer over to my iphone

 

[Sittatunga]

Hi Chepe:
I've been using bluetooth connection to my iPhone to get hold of location data, and its working fine.
In addition to what Dave mentioned, on EOS R you would have to set Smartphone as the "Select GPS device". Also, the second option of sending location data via WiFi is turned off on my phone.
Hope this helps.
Ali

I tried it but I noticed google photos doesn’t recognize the tags.

i noticed that if you use camera connect app to transfer the pictures to my iphones, the geotags don't come across. But when i copy the picture to google photos, the geotags do come across. kind of silly that camera connect doesn't transfer it over.

i wonder if you use the GPS dongle would it auto transfer over to my iphone

If I copy pictures from my original EOS M to Google photos the app will come up with the location of my phone when the photo was taken. The original EOS M was never advertised as having a geotagging function.

 

[User5942872967]

Hi Chepe:
I've been using bluetooth connection to my iPhone to get hold of location data, and its working fine.
In addition to what Dave mentioned, on EOS R you would have to set Smartphone as the "Select GPS device". Also, the second option of sending location data via WiFi is turned off on my phone.
Hope this helps.
Ali

I tried it but I noticed google photos doesn’t recognize the tags.

i noticed that if you use camera connect app to transfer the pictures to my iphones, the geotags don't come across. But when i copy the picture to google photos, the geotags do come across. kind of silly that camera connect doesn't transfer it over.

i wonder if you use the GPS dongle would it auto transfer over to my iphone

If I copy pictures from my original EOS M to Google photos the app will come up with the location of my phone when the photo was taken. The original EOS M was never advertised as having a geotagging function.

wished it would work both ways. doesn't make sense that transferring the picture to my iphone photo and then having that auto upload to google doesn't keep the geotag.

 

[lawny13]

I have found this works well on the R. You just have to monitor that it is still working. As it warns on page 415 of the EOS R manual, if you turn the camera off, it can lose the GPS connection. I found that I needed to open the smartphone again to reconnect it. I’m not sure whether it would have done so by itself, if I had waited long enough.

When I was on a safari recently, I got into the habit of leaving the camera switched on all the time, albeit with power saving enabled. That seemed to be an effective way of maintaining the GPS connection, though I continued to monitor it. I was afraid the battery would run out on either the smartphone or the EOS R, but I never had a problem.

Note... there is also a funtion that allows you to access the camera's images while it is off. Essentially it is an always bluetooth connected option. I use this to show/look-at images when the camera is in the bag and I can't be bothered taking it out.

I found that like this the connection for GPS is then more consistent.

You can easily see/test this.

1. Turn on setting for always having blue tooth connection when the camera connect app is open.

2. Open camera connect app (go through the tethering steps if you aren't paired with your phone).

3. With (1) activated, you should see that the bluetooth icon in the camera connect app is lit (so connected to the camera), while the wireless is not connected.

4. Locate and set the select GPS device as your smartphone.

At this point looking at the camera connect app you should see the blue tooth icon as on, ans between it and the camera icon you should be able to see the location arrow on.



5. Turn off the camera... you will see the camera connect app refresh (takes a few seconds). You will see the bluetooth icon is still on, but the location arrow is gone.

6. Turn on the camera and again the app refreshes and the arrow comes back.

Rinse and repeat the turning on and off to see that it does connect consistently and relatively quickly.

If you do not have the always connected blue tooth option then you need to be careful and monitor that they are indeed connected. This can be a pain, especially if you forget. With the above settings and work flow, all I need to ensure that I do when I first head out is to turn on the app and camera and observe the location icon (in app) and GPS icon (in camera) come on. From there, it is phone in pocket and get going. With the on/off approach to conserve camera battery life this is nice to have.