GPS & Feature suggestion

[Dieter Mayr]

Some cameras have already a GPS-sensor built it, or a additional sensor to plug in for geting the GPS-data in the EXIFs.
Recently I have learned a method to get this data quiet easliy even for cameras without GPS-sensor.
Many already have a camera with built in GPS-sensor without thinking of it, a Smartphone with GPS-sensor.
So the suggested workflow is to take a picture at location with the phone, with GPS, and the "real" photos the with the "good" camera.
Then to transfer the GPS-data from the one phone-picture to the others.
For now this has to be done with some external software, but maybe this would be a possible new feature in a future PWP version, to be able to copy GPS-data from one photo to a bunch of others (maybe in workflow via widget) ?

Maybe this is new to some, and helpful!

[ksinkel]

Thank you. That's an interesting idea.

Kiril

[MikeG]

For what it's worth, this is what I do every time I go for a 'photo walk'.
Start Google My Tracks on my Android phone.
Take (generally RAW) photos with camera only.
Once home, upload photos to computer (via Eye-Fi card); upload MyTracks data as a gpx file to the computer (via WiFi Explorer).
Marry the two together using GeoSetter.
Start processing the RAW files.
Mike.

[Dieter Mayr]

Mike, but you have to synchronize your camera's clock with the GPS clock, don't you ?
How precise the camera clock has to be, do a few seconds difference make a problem or do you have to synchronize them every time you use them?
I use my android phone as a navgation system for the car, too, and it sucks quiet on the battery if I would not connect it to power in the car, but of course the display runs all the time, which it would not have to for my tracks.
Can you have a whole day tour with a fresh loaded battery?
I will give it a try at the weekend, for sure (well, if the sunday is without rain, that is ... )

Thanks for your sugestion.

[MikeG]

Dieter, the sycnhronisation does not have to be very precise as Geosetter caters for this. Generally I find that a 60 second window works fine for me. I've not tried My Tracks for more than a couple of hours or so which hasn't impacted the battery charge noticeably though I habitually charge overnight. As you wrote I turn the screen off, and WiFi off. Without a connection to the internet the tracks are recorded but not placed on a map on the phone. If you wish so see the tracks on a map on the phone then you need 3G or whatever switched on and that's a bit more drain on the battery.
As my walks are in a limited area I don't bother with the on-the-phone map. Though in the past I've refreshed the map every month or so and made use of Google Maps cache-on-the-phone for 30 days option.
I have a spare (eBay) battery for the phone so for a long walk I could record tracks in two parts, I guess.
BTW when doing this I carry my phone in my shirt pocket - in the possible\y delusional belief that this helps it stay connected to the GPS satellites.
Good luck with the weather.
Mike.

[Dieter Mayr]

Thank's Mike.
I did a short test last evening, a quick walk around the block just to test MyTrack.
I had the phone in my trousers pocket, worked fine so far. I will not need internet connection, tracking the position is all I need.
On Sunday I will spend the day in a open air museum, so it will be a long term test then, 6 to 7 hours or so.
So, if the weather will be as the forcast says (today and tomorrow rain, but dry on sunday) and if it's of interest here ( it is not really related with PWP ... ) I will report my results next week.

[MikeG]

I'll be interested - if no-one else!

[Dieter Mayr]

I'm back home, we had a nice sunny day, temperatures could have been better but thats just a matter of cloth ;) .
My experiment with the phone as GPS-Logger did run very successful.
First the circumstances: My phone is a Samsung S II, Software for logging MyTrack from Google. The phone was fully charged when I started, the trip was about 6 h 30 min long with the logger running all the time. WLAN was off, 3G I have let active.
The battery charging state after the trip was at 54%, so I think even a 8 to 9 hours trip will be no problem with 3G on, for longer trips will be maybe wise to turn it off. I did not do other activities on the phone, just checked the status some times to see if all is running as expected.
I had the phone in a shoulder bag, no problem with the recording, all the track was in the corridor of precision of 6 meter that GPS can deliver.
The GPX file for the trip is about 200kB, so no real big deal.
I have set my camera to the same time as my phone in the morning, to the same minute, my "small" bridge camera I
had with me today does only allow to set the minutes, so seconds available.
Synchronsation between the images and the geodata file was done with GeoSetter.
The synchroniastion went fast and the resulted locations of the images are well within the 6 meter precision GPS can deliver.

So my concluision:
A very well working method for geting geodata into images.
I will definately not use it all the time, I normally know where I take my pictures or it is simply not important from where they are, but when being in unknown terrain, in a city I have never been before or such things, it's definately a very good method that I will use.
Of course this method can not determine the compas direction of the shot, if that would be important for anyone a camera with built in or external plug in GPS sensor will be needed.

Mike, thank you very much for sharing your method, it really worked very well!

[MikeG]

Dieter, Very pleased that all went so smoothly. Interesting that you were able to run My Tracks and 3G for so long and still have half the battery capacity left. I suppose that my Samsung Galaxy Note should behave similarly.
Now we can return to PWP!
Mike.