Pascal Photography Studio

Geotagging photos

This is the follow up from my previous post on geotagging.

I had scheduled some time during the weekend, an entire day to be honest, to do some photography and try to geotag… First, the weather was not on my site, cloudy and threats of rain but this did not stop me. Batteries charged, GPS tracking on, backpack ready and off we went, more about the places we visited in the next few days. Even if the photos were not great my geotagging experiment would yield results.

There are a few issues with geotagging that one needs to be aware of:

• Synchronise the Camera’s Time with your GPS!!! I cannot stress that enough.
• Keep the GPS on tracking all times.
• Make sure the GPS is always on you, I forgot it in the car once and it skews the locations.

That will allow you to have all the necessary data to enable you to go the geotagging  when you get back to your computer.

After the photos are downloaded to your computer the possess is rather simple, download the track data from your GPS to your computer, I used Easy GPS for that task, it is free, supports wide array of GPS units and works well. I would advise to save the GPX file in the same folder as the photos, it will make it easy to find it later.

Next comes the synchronisation of the photos and the location stamping, for that I used GPicSync. GPicSync is very straight forward and supports Jpeg pictures and main RAW files format as well as being free. How to geotag? Select the GPX file, select the picture folder and let it go it’s job. Beware of the time it takes, I did a full 8GB of photos, about 350 RAW and JEPG (700 files) in about 1 hour, it is a slow possess. Also remember to set the UTC Offset and I set the time difference to 600 because I was in a few buildings.

The catch, if you have downloaded the photos using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2, you will have to refresh the metadata after the geotagging process.

The conclusion is that my Gramin eTrex C will now be a permanent feature in my camera bag, the geotagging process is simple enough to warrant it.

And now for something completely different… Geotagging

So I lie a little, it’s still about photography.

I have a conundrum, when I do have the chance of doing some photography for fun I am usually nowhere near home and to be honest with you when I get home I have little time to do post-processing and no time to geotag. You would of noticed that I try to give a location in all my photographs.

So here is my solution:

1. Use a BIG monitor, 22inch +
2. Use Adode Photoshop Lightroom 2
   I am sold, that is it. It is the best photography related software I came across for the PC, MAC guys sorry I do not have a MAC so I cannot try Apple’s Aperture. From sorting, tagging to adjusting and publishing, it does 95% of what I need. Adobe, you should include a stitching utility though, really. 
3. When sorting if it does not catch your eye in the first 5 seconds, forget it.
4. Use a preset workflow when importing.
5. Geotag your photographs using a GPS to record location.

And here is the catch, to use a GPS to geotag you need a GPS capable of either creating a trail (track) or that knows when you shoot. I had a look at on camera solutions, expensive to tell you the truth. I would rather spend the money to a new wide-angle lens.

But wait, I own a Garmin Vista C, sure it’s not new but it works and it tracks movement! It might not be as glamorous as a Jobo but at least I do not need to have further expenses, I found some good resources on line to take the GPX file and auto geotag my photos. And I am going to try it this week-end.

I thing to remember when going it this way, synchronise the Camera’s time to the GPS!

Further on my experiences soon.