GPS: Geotag

[Kim]

Originally Posted by chinoook

There is software around which does the job for you: You copy the images to one location, the GPS track to another and everything is done in seconds to minutes. Since you have your GPS (not the lost one ...) always with you it should be any problem at all.
All you have to do is to synchronize the time of your camera to GPS time, but this is not a big deal either.


-chinoook

I'm aware of software solutions but prefer to add GPS location to the photo EXIF data directly when taking the photo. Anyway, unless on the Great Wall I don't carry the handheld GPS around.

[Bryan]

So you've had a chance to test the GP-1?

[Kim]

Originally Posted by Bryan

So you've had a chance to test the GP-1?

I'm in Beijing now so I tested it yesterday at Baitasi, and it seems to work fine. Today I tested it during a Hutong trip but I only saved the photos as RAW and the software on my labtop don't recognise the GPS data in the EXIF data for some reason unless I convert to JPG. I don't have a good RAW converter on the labtop so further evaluation will have to wait until I'm back home.

So far it seems to work fine.

This photo (http://www.panoramio.com/photo/32686937) is geotaged with the GP-1. Given an accuracy of 10 meters and knowing that Googles images might not be 100 % correctly aligned I think the result is pretty good.

[Kim]

I tried to test some more pictures from around Qianmen i Beijing. When testing the location in Google Earth the result is really perfect.

I tried to upload to Panoramio but for some reason the pictures are then placed north of Chengde in Hebei. I don't know how to explain than since the recorded location is correct and displays in GE without any problem. Anyway I did not buy the GPS because of Panoramio so I can live with that.

[Bryan]

Originally Posted by Kim

I tried to test some more pictures from around Qianmen i Beijing. When testing the location in Google Earth the result is really perfect.

I tried to upload to Panoramio but for some reason the pictures are then placed north of Chengde in Hebei. I don't know how to explain than since the recorded location is correct and displays in GE without any problem. Anyway I did not buy the GPS because of Panoramio so I can live with that.

It's great to hear that it's working so accurately. Maybe you should report the problem to Panoramio. It could be an error in their software.

[Kim]

I have now also tried the GPS in Ningxia and I must say that I'm very satisfied. It takes about 45 to 60 seconds to log on the the satellites in a new location, but after that it takes between 2 and 4 seconds, so basically in the time between turning on the camera until I'm ready to shoot the GPS has logged on to the satellites and is ready to write to the EXIF data.

How it looks in Google Earth of cause depends on how accurate the GE image is. In the area I visited in Ningxia, the images seems to be aligned very well.

Normally I use Faststone to view my photos but it seems unable to read the geotag info from RAW files, so I use Nikon's ViewNX instead to view the location - or convert to JPG first.

[Kim]

Originally Posted by Bryan

It's great to hear that it's working so accurately. Maybe you should report the problem to Panoramio. It could be an error in their software.

It seems to be a problem when converting from RAW to JPG. Some EXIF data is lost/changed so Panoramio don't understand the location. I normally shoot as both JPG and RAW so that is not really a problem.

[Bryan]

Originally Posted by Kim

It seems to be a problem when converting from RAW to JPG. Some EXIF data is lost/changed so Panoramio don't understand the location. I normally shoot as both JPG and RAW so that is not really a problem.

24-bit color is part of the EXIF standard. Your camera uses a greater color depth in its RAW image format, and therefore it uses a proprietary format, not a standard TIFF file, in order to be able to add GPS data. It's probably also an undisclosed and possibly encrypted format, making it difficult for any third-party software to convert it. No surprise then that you have the best results with the Nikon software.

[Kim]

Originally Posted by Bryan

24-bit color is part of the EXIF standard. Your camera uses a greater color depth in its RAW image format, and therefore it uses a proprietary format, not a standard TIFF file, in order to be able to add GPS data. It's probably also an undisclosed and possibly encrypted format, making it difficult for any third-party software to convert it. No surprise then that you have the best results with the Nikon software.

No problem for other kinds of software to read GPS information in geotaged jpg files. As far as I know other people have the same problem when geotagging RAW files and then converting them to JPG - not only Nikon.

The same result when converting in Capture NX2 or Photoshop, so I doubt this has anything to do with the format or encryption. I have not tested other software than ViewNX and Faststone regarding reading the GPS info from the RAW file, but I guess is should be possible for other software to read it.

[Bryan]

Right. Jpeg EXIF files are an open standard. RAW files are not standard at all. It has nothing to do with Nikon.

However, I do not know if any third party software can reliably read the "Exif" data in the Nikon RAW format. I would be surprised.