I’ve always been in to the idea of geotagging my photographs and because I’ve had a GPS unit for a number of years I have had a go from time to time. The reason it was only done occasionally and not all of the time was because the GPS unit I had was meant for navigational use, it’s very good at that, but it’s not the sort of thing you can just drop into your camera bag and forget about. It has a screen that draws power and it was produced at a time when the technology available meant that you really needed a good clean unobstructed view of the sky for it to function properly. When I had it attached to my mountain bike’s handlebars it would record a track log as it went, but if I cycled in to part of a forest with trees overhead, the signal would degrade and get lost – fairly quickly really. Mapping software will fill in the blanks later, but as a method of recording – especially if you get in to thick forests, it leaves something to be desired. GPS technology has moved on and I expect that newer versions are far more sensitive than my old model.
From a photographers point of view though, the best solution for geotagging your images would be to have a GPS built in to the camera that recorded your position as it wrote the image with all of the current EXIF data. Indeed I have seen a few specialist cameras that do that – only a few though. I have even seen devices that fit in to the hot shoe and feed the location in to the camera so that it can include it with the EXIF data – that wasn’t an option for me with my Nikon D50 though – it seems to require newer kit for that to work – and I’m not sure taking up the hot shoe is such a good idea either – especially with something that looks like a small brick.
So, a few weeks ago we had a Flickrmeet at Chatsworth House and we got talking about ways of geotagging your photos. One of the guys had recently posted a blog entry about three possible devices for doing this. Each of these devices recorded your position and didn’t have all of the extra stuff normal GPS devices have – like a screen.
I read about the three devices mentioned there and had a good read of the discussions about the devices in the Geotagging group on Flickr. The Sony device which was the first one I’d heard about seemed to have problems keeping it’s signal in built up areas – not a good sign really.The Jobo website for their PhotoGPS product was awful and you couldn’t even see the product or find much out about it. The other product mentioned was the Gisteq PhotoTrackr. That one looked more promising. It seemed to be very sensitive – to the point of being able to put it inside a camera bag and have it still work – and it had a motion sensor so that it would go to sleep and not record information when it wasn’t moving. This really meant that you could turn it on when you went out and forget about it. You could in theory forget about it for days or weeks and it would silently work away gathering it’s location information.
So, I bought one of the Gisteq devices.
When I unpacked the device, I installed the supplied PhotoTrackr software which seemed very nice, the device itself installed fine (even though I use a 64bit version of Vista which is probably the hardest to get drivers and things for). The PhotoTrackr software doesn’t support RAW files, but it’s Pro version does, so I stumped up the 20 dollars to make life easy for me.
Today, I went for a walk around Clumber Park, turned the device on, and slipped it in to my shirt pocket – I did take it out a few times to begin with to check it was ok (it always was so I forgot about it). A lot of my walking route was through thick forest and I know from experience with my old Garmin eTrex that I’d probably lose the signal in places like that – not with this thing though – examining the tracklog afterwards, it carried on logging – I found that very impressive – especially considering the device was in my pocket and not out in the open.
When I returned home, I set my photos importing in to Lightroom and converting to DNG and also gave them a set of common tags from the day. While that was being taken care of, I opened up the PhotoTrackr software and attached the GPS device. Part of me expected it to have not recorded anything, but the tracklog appeared on top of the Google Maps display and it looked perfect – there were a few squiggles here and there where I’d stopped for various reasons and one or two little jumps where I was in particularly difficult locations (in a little stone building in the Clumber grotto or actually laid on top of the device on a tree whilst taking a photo).
So far I was very impressed indeed. The photos finished importing in to Lightroom, so I pointed the PhotoTrackr software at them and all of the little markers appear on it’s map – and hovering over them shows you the photo and a few notes about it – a nice touch is that it gives you the approximate place name too.
I told it to write the information back to the original images. At this stage they weren’t appearing in Lightroom. It dawned on me that Lightroom keeps it’s metadata in it’s database and doesn’t alter the original files unless asked – so I used it’s option to read in the metadata from the files and sure enough, the GPS info was there on all of my photos. Lightroom even has a little link to Google Maps for each image that has a location. Like the tags, the location gets uploaded and remains intact when you send it to Flickr, so you find your photos on your Flickr map straight away.
In future, I’ll import my photos, give them the default tags, sync the tags to the files, geotag them then refresh the metadata – that sounds far worse than the reality of a few menu clicks.
Nicely, the PhotoTrackr software can export as Google Maps web pages, Google Earth files and GPX files – the latter is especially useful because most good mapping software will read that should you wish to use your tracklogs for something else. It is possible to upload straight from PhotoTrackr to Flickr, but I prefer to stick to Lightroom for that.
I’ll post an update after a lot more use to see if any problems come out of the woodwork.
Comments 14
Nice article - I think I’ll be looking at getting one in the new year.
Posted 18 Nov 2007 at 9:46 am ¶Bought mine today. Looking forward to using it whilst on 4×4 trips greenlaning. I’m not far away from Clumber ( Gainsborough ) and may take a closer look at your walk. I seem to be a Gadget Freak. Bought a Wifi SD card last week to send pictures back to the on board laptop whilst out and about.
A good review. Looking forward to reading more.
Posted 10 Dec 2007 at 1:01 pm ¶Dave, are you saying that the hardware Trackr you bought didn’t support raw files, but now does so after a software upgrade to Pro? Reason I ask is that I’m interested in the PhotoTrackr Lite which, according to this chart, doesn’t support raw. I’m not clear whether this is a hardware or bundled software limitation.
Secondly, do you know if it makes more sense to geocode your raw files and then process them in Bridge/ Photoshop, or would it be preferable to leave the raw files untouched and attach the EXIF data to saved JPEGs?
Posted 01 Mar 2008 at 10:49 pm ¶Bruce,
It looks like that chart has the same device listed twice - one normal and one pro. The only difference will be the version of the bundled software. My upgrade was a $20 upgrade of the software - which by default just opened JPG. The Pro version opens up DNG RAW files which is fine for me as it fits in with using Lightroom quite nicely.
I imagine that the Lite version just comes with the normal version of the software - at the end of the day, all of the devices just supply a tracklog and it’s the software on the computer that matches that up with the time of the photographs and updates them with the co-ordinates.
The default software should allow you to get the tracklog from the device and export that as a GPX file for use in any software you care to use. Prior to getting the PhotoTrackr, I had a licence for RoboGeo and that allows you to match a tracklog with DNG files too. For an easy life though, the Pro version of the PhotoTrackr software is probably going to make things easier.
My actual workflow goes like this:
1. Import photos in to Lightroom
2. Import tracklog from PhotoTrackr in to PhotoTrackr Pro Software
3. Open my imported Lightroom photo folder in PhotoTrackr Pro and write co-ordinates to DNG files
4. Get Lightroom to re-read metadata
5. Apply tags to photos in Lightroom
I find that after that, any editing I do (including in Photoshop), the metadata stays in tact, including the co-ordinates.
Posted 01 Mar 2008 at 11:05 pm ¶Thanks Dave. This probably means I could buy PhotoTrackr Lite, import the track log and then export it to GPX under Windows (Boot Camp), then use the GPX file to geocode either raw or jpg using e.g. HoudaGeo under OS X. Sounds feasible—you’re sure the basic (non-Pro) software exports to GPX?
Good to know your GPS data survives editing; apparently editing in iPhoto is a bad idea (not that I would anyway) as it eats metadata for breakfast.
Posted 01 Mar 2008 at 11:27 pm ¶I’m not 100% sure - but I think the only difference between normal and Pro is import file types - all of the exports for Google Maps, Google Earth and GPX and and so on remain unchanged as far as I know.
Posted 01 Mar 2008 at 11:31 pm ¶I’ve taken delivery of the phototrackr.
Works very well.
Have not stumped up the extra cash for pro version.
I use RoboGeo and GeoSetter(free) to sync GPX to photos.
Work flow:
Copy .nef to H/D
Copy GPX to H/D
Sync photos to GPX in Robogeo/Geosetter
Import into Lightroom.
Found that this way I do not have to re read the xmp files.
Have done 26K other photos using GeoSetter to find place on map (pre GPS purchase)
Would love to find other software to interface with the Phototrackr.
Not too sure of the loss/re-acquiring signal at present. Does not seem to be happy inside coat pocket, but out in open is fine
Posted 05 Mar 2008 at 8:00 am ¶Usually when I ask a question it snowballs into something that gets out-of-hand. I’ve boned up on the theory and used a couple of cameras on several outings with a variety of software to put it all to the test:
http://www.bioneural.net/2008/03/05/an-abc-of-geotagging-photos-on-the-mac/
Posted 05 Mar 2008 at 8:56 pm ¶I just got hold of a Photo Trackr lite today and have only had limited success with the bundled software. The window that is supposed to display the maps comes up blank and I am presented with a message saying that the API code I have is for the wrong website? But what website am I supposed to put when applying for an API code - as I only want to use it through the application.
I’m sure this should be simple, but I just can’t get it working. Any ideas/help??
Posted 12 Mar 2008 at 1:43 pm ¶Mark,
One of my friends had the same problem when installing the program. From memory, when I installed the software, it walked me through a wizard which told me what to type in there.
If I were you, I’d download the latest version, uninstall your version and go through the setup again with the latest version. The instructions in the wizard should walk you through it fine.
Posted 12 Mar 2008 at 5:06 pm ¶Thanks Dave. I’ll give that a go.
Hard as I’m not on my own computer so trying not to download and install too many apps! On that note, I read that the unit will store b/w 3-4 weeks of logging data before the memory fills up. Is there any way to save that data from the unit without installing the software? I am going to be backpacking for the next 4-5 months, so won’t have access to my own computer for quite a while…. and I’m not sure how keen they will be at Internet Cafes to let me install the program.
Any thoughts?
Posted 13 Mar 2008 at 1:20 am ¶Mark, I think you’re stuffed! I’ve not seen anything that will do everything you want it to do. A traditional GPS with removable memory cards would do the trick (like the new Garmin eTrex models), but they would also be pain to keep on all of the time.
Posted 13 Mar 2008 at 7:01 pm ¶I bought the PhotoTrackr light, and installed the basic software that came with the device. It works, but does not handle raw images. So I bought the upgrade and installed the Pro version. I can see that the Pro version is running after starting the program. It shows it’s name. But raw images are still not handled. The camera used is listed as being supported. For now it seems that there is no advantage having the Pro version. It doesn’t do anything more than the basic version. The documentation is also poor, so maybe I am doing something wrong. If anyone has it working, can you tell how you do your workflow?
Posted 30 May 2008 at 10:52 am ¶Hi publicenergy,
I’m looking into purchasing one of these devices for a trip to the United States. The trip is a three month roadtrip so obviously I wont be sorting my photos until I’m home - is it possible to just grab the ‘geotag data file’ or whatever from the GPS device, send it home on a CF card or whatever with the photos and then sort them later.
So each CF card has 2gb of photos and however many geotag files. I’m simply making sure that you don’t require the software to extract the geotag data from the device.
Posted 05 Jun 2008 at 10:01 am ¶Trackbacks & Pingbacks 2
[...] data to photographs and it seems to have fallen by the wayside. I’m glad that I use the Gisteq PhotoTrackr for geotagging almost all of my photos these days, because trying to accurately position a [...]
[...] the Gisteq PhotoTrackr continues to work very well, meaning that all of my photos get geotagged when I’m out walking [...]
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