GPS for Christmas

[pnodrog]

Received a much hinted for Micronova GPS unit to go on my camera for Christmas. Always fancied having one but now that I have tried it in association with Lightroom map facility I have just realized how useful it will be.

Below are a couple of shots taken to try it out and a screen shot of Lightrooms map screen. I do not know how many are using Geotaging using a GPS but I wish I had got one fifty years ago...

How many of you are using them and with what applications?

[loosecanon]

I use a gps unit all the time to produce a gpx file to geotag in lightroom. I tend to move the marker on the google earth map to the object photographed rather than always leave it as the location of the camera. This way google then looks up the location correctly. As a facility it saves hours in labelling images as one can then search on say village names at a later date, or of course look on google earth and see what you have logged.
Incidently anyone in the UK should be looking to get a GPS unit with maps. Ordnance Survey (The national mapping agency) has slashed the price of maps - I got the whole of Britain for £150 at 1:25000 scale at an introductory offer.
If you are looking for locations etc this scale is much better than "1inch" (1:50,000) scale.

[pnodrog]

I use a gps unit all the time to produce a gpx file to geotag in lightroom. I tend to move the marker on the google earth map to the object photographed rather than always leave it as the location of the camera. This way google then looks up the location correctly. As a facility it saves hours in labelling images as one can then search on say village names at a later date, or of course look on google earth and see what you have logged.
Incidently anyone in the UK should be looking to get a GPS unit with maps. Ordnance Survey (The national mapping agency) has slashed the price of maps - I got the whole of Britain for £150 at 1:25000 scale at an introductory offer.
If you are looking for locations etc this scale is much better than "1inch" (1:50,000) scale.

Thanks Yes loosecanon (a complicated name). I am surprised I have not seen any threads discussing using GPS I can only assume it is not widely used or most like me felt it would be nice to have but not worth the cost. Not that expensive (US$85) and worked without any setup with either my camera or Lightroom. Almost as I said above I wish I had got one as soon as the prices got reasonable.

The map scale available via Google seems to be fine for what I need but I will probably be fussier by next week.

[CP140]

I have a little Panasonic waterproof hat has a GPS... handy on those snorkelling / boat tours where you're not quite sure exactly where you were at the time.

There is an add-on GPS unit for Pentax SLRs... thought about it, but I haven't been able to really justify it. If I need to "tag" where something was taken, I'll try to get a shot of a road sign, landmark etc. and use that as a reference point.

[rpcrowe]

My wife and I gave each other a Garmin 3597 GPS as our mutual Christmas gift. Our plans for using this is simply for direction finding and its Bluetooth capability which will allow hands off (California law) use of our iPhones.

[pnodrog]

I have a little Panasonic waterproof hat has a GPS... handy on those snorkelling / boat tours where you're not quite sure exactly where you were at the time.

There is an add-on GPS unit for Pentax SLRs... thought about it, but I haven't been able to really justify it. If I need to "tag" where something was taken, I'll try to get a shot of a road sign, landmark etc. and use that as a reference point.

Martin like you I felt it was a bit hard to justify but I am so pleased with the convience of the auto geotagging that I am now absolutely happy with the requested investment.

[pnodrog]

My wife and I gave each other a Garmin 3597 GPS as our mutual Christmas gift. Our plans for using this is simply for direction finding and its Bluetooth capability which will allow hands off (California law) use of our iPhones.

I have looked at the Garmin GPS units for my car. If I get lost I have an app for my mobile phone that acts as an in car GPS but I know it is not as good as a dedicated unit. At present I am holding off as tablets and smartphones are close to making a dedicated unit redundant and any car upgrade will probably have built in bluetooth. It is always a bit of a gamble as to when is the best time to buy any piece of evolving technology.

[shreds]

The iPhone 5s has this facility and I must admit I am warming to it.

Within five years or less, all cameras will have GPS.

Garmin have been one of the leaders in GPS for years and better than some others I could mention.

Of course the paranoid conspiracy theorists or urbex explorers will not want this kind of technology pinpointing their whereabouts!!

[CP140]

Martin like you I felt it was a bit hard to justify but I am so pleased with the convience of the auto geotagging that I am now absolutely happy with the requested investment.

Perhaps I need to take another look at the Pentax module....

[CP140]

The iPhone 5s has this facility and I must admit I am warming to it.

Within five years or less, all cameras will have GPS.

Garmin have been one of the leaders in GPS for years and better than some others I could mention.

Of course the paranoid conspiracy theorists or urbex explorers will not want this kind of technology pinpointing their whereabouts!!

I will say I like the mapping/gps capabilities built into the iphone.... too bad it's such a battery hog and that it pulls down the mapping info via cellular data... means I can't use it (afford it) if I'm out of the country or in an area with bad cel reception.

Those are the sort of situations where a stand alone dedicated gps loaded with mapping software on a micro SD card really comes into it's own. I'm onto my third Garmin hand held now... the first one is still alive and is part of an APRS tracker (radio geek thing) I put together, the second I killed by leaving it in the glove box on a hot day. The current one is fine... but a word of warning, the Garmin Oregon series are battery hogs

As for the pinpointing of ones location... a little bit of triangulation from a couple of cel towers can tell someone where you are...

[rpcrowe]

I do like a dedicated GPS unit instead of a smartphone GPS. I was traveling at night along the California side of the Colorado River looking for an RV park at which we had reservations. We did not know if we had missed the park and passed it on this dark, rather desolate road. We tried to get our bearings using my wife's iPhone but, due to the terrain, there was no phone service - so no GPS either. This doesn't happen often but, when it does, it is very disconcerting...

We purchased a Garmin 3597 GPS unit which is the flagship of the Garmin GPS units. It is O.K. but, not super great. It's ability to understand voice commands is very bad. I was trying to locate an address on Grand Avenue and it couldn't understand the word "Grand" when either I or my wife spoke it. Grand is not a complicated name and it works even worse with complicated names like my city, Escondido, California!

I do like that at the top of the unit it shows you the next turn and the distance to that turn. However using the audible directions, it often doesn't tell you when to urn until you are almost up to the place in which you have to turn. So I need to see the screen of the unit rather than to rely on audible instructions. A nice thing is that I can red the screen quite well while I am using polarized sunglasses. Some other units don't have that capability.

I once had a Magellan GPS which gave better audible warnings. However, the unit kept failing.

I do like a lot of things about the Garmin including traffic updates (I have not tested the accuracy of these) and the rerouting around major tie-ups (have not tested this either). The unit will integrate with a smartphone but, we have not tried this either and will allow hands-off calling. Supposedly it will allow voice activated dialing but, if the darn thing cannot understand "Grand Avenue" I don't hold much hope for the voice activated dialing.

Another neat thing about the unit is that it shows your speed and estimated ETA at your selected location. It also shows the speed limit on the route you are driving and gives an audible warning when you enter a reduced speed school zone.

It also shows the lanes in which you should be driving and has a three dimensional rendition of your route (if you want it) showing the buildings, etc.

I have a Visio 8-Inch Tablet that has a built-in, stand alone GPS. This works quite well but, is rather big in size. That is a two edged sword... The large screen is easy to read but, the large unit is difficult to mount in a convenient location. I will continue using the Visio in my vehicle and my wife will use the Garmin. The next vehicle we buy will have a built-in GPS and bluetooth phone connection...

[Manfred M]

I bought a dedicated GPS for my D90 and now use it on my D800. It's great for travel as it automatically geotags the images and nicely places them on a map for me using either Nikon's View NX2 or Adobe Lightroom. It's great for going back and figuring out where we were.



That being said, it's not 100% fool-proof as it significantly mistagged about three of my shots. The only feature is not included that would be nice would be a compass function that shows the direction I was shooting.

[pnodrog]

Richard I have often thought I should get didicated GPS navigation in the car. Interesting enough we have a hill on the way to work with a passing lane most of the way up it. When the speed limit was dropped from 100km to 80km people were driving right past me. I noticed when using my cell phone app that the map was still showing the old limit. I think the cops found it very easy to issue their quota of tickets to people not noticing the signs.

Manfred you use it exactly as I intend too and I absolutely agree that a compass bearing on the direction of the photograph would be a great feature.

[yauman]

Years ago (may 5?) I purchased the Tom Tom GPS app for my iPhone 3 - paid $49.99 for it - it's the most expensive app I've ever purchased and in the intervening years, I've upgraded to iPhone 5s and the app has continue to be useful (and upgraded for free to keep up with the maps and new IOS). The advantage is that it downloads the entire map or N.America - 1.6GB these days - so it can be used when there's no cell signals - all it require is to acquire the GPS satellite signals. Not only that, all the other info are up-to-date including speed limits, gas stations, points of interests etc. It comes with multi-lingual voices (love the Australian and British female voices. I set it to Cantonese when my mom was using it.) So basically with that app, I have a dedicated GPS.