A330 bundled with a Sony GPS unit

[stevecim]

Hi All


I just saw on sonystyle Australia they are selling the a330 bundled with a GPS unit. "Included with GPS unit for easy geotagging of photos. "
This may seem like a stupid question but how does a external GPS unit tag photos in the camera?

Cheers, Stephen

[PhotoTraveler]

This came up in a different thread. Basically it's a kludgy approach with limits, see my comments there.

http://www.photoclubalpha.com/forum/vie ... =15#p24838

[David Kilpatrick]

Really silly. You only need a one minute time difference between the camera and the separate GPS to be hopelessly wrong, and it's only accurate to within 30 feet or so at the best before you start. My Sony GPS is capable being anything up to half a kilometre off position and recorded places I could not possibly have been (like in the middle of field when I was definitely on the road!). Nikon's D5000 solution is far better.

David

[Chris Malcolm]

The easiest way of geotagging is to take advantage of the cheapness of taking another digital shot. So for any set of photos you want to geotag take an extra orientation shot of surroundings with easily identifiable landmark. In the absence of landmarks just photograph the location display of your favourite GPS unit. Synchronisation problem solved

[PhotoTraveler]

Well, the "shoot landmarks" has been what I've done for years. It's not a real answer, and just means more image sitting around just so you can reverse engineer your trip.

Having spent days with a nikon, the plug in method is great. I've gone out, stood on specific spots that I can ID from sat images within say 6 inches, and it's spot on.

Sony even has it built into video cameras. How on earth it is that they don't have it in the Alphas is beyond all common sense.

[Dusty]

Sony even has it built into video cameras. How on earth it is that they don't have it in the Alphas is beyond all common sense.

Because most of the cameras DNA is still from KM. If they make a big shift with different internals, look for it then.

Dusty

[Johnc]

I have been using the Qstarz unit for a few years now and found it relatively easy and accurate.
http://www.qstarz.com/Products/GPS%20Pr ... 000X-F.htm
One of the real advantages is that it is very small, and the battery life is well over 24hr - yesterday I was doing so tests and accidentally left in on. Some 30hrs later, its still live and logging.
Worth a look.

[fastson]

I just use my Garmin GPS for when I need to geotag, works really really well.. accurate to about 10 meters. It spits out a GPX-file which can be used together with GeoSetter to write the GPS data into EXIF, which sites like Flickr then can read.

All you need to do is sync the time on the camera with the time on the GPS unit. Best way of doing it? Photograph the GPS display when the clock is showing and check what time you get on the EXIF from the camera. I'm usually able to sync it to 1-2 seconds, a little overkill but I like to be exact.


Here the GPX data is imported into Google Earth.

[Winston]

I have been using the Qstarz unit for a few years now and found it relatively easy and accurate.
http://www.qstarz.com/Products/GPS%20Pr ... 000X-F.htm
One of the real advantages is that it is very small, and the battery life is well over 24hr - yesterday I was doing so tests and accidentally left in on. Some 30hrs later, its still live and logging.
Worth a look.

I use that unit too. Are you sure you're not using an older model? I thought the -165dbm chipset (MTK II) was announced late last year.

[Johnc]

You are probably correct - my unit is the BT-1000 model - about 2 years old.
I had never previously done a battery test and did one by default this past weekend - was very impressed, so I now know that when travelling, I can safely leave the unit on all day if necessary, and charge it at night.

[colorpenguin]

I use one of these:

http://www.semsons.com/i747bldalogp.html

which looks like the Qstarz unit in slightly different packaging. The battery life outside is great, but being inside (out of GPS reception) for much of the day reduces it. There's even linux & Mac software for it:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/bt747