Geotagging on my K20D

[George Norkus]

With my K20D, I'd like to geotag  my photographs in realtime not from a computer. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

[spyglass]

I do not believe that there is any way to do this. There are some other options you could explore.

1) If you had a GPS device with you, you could set a way point for each photo location. You could  name the way points based on the name the camera assigns to the photo. Then later in the comforts of your home, you could enter/embed the Lat & Long information in the actual picture file so that it is permanently married to the photo. I know that in Photoshop there is no limit to the amount of information you can save with a photo. In Windows you can right click on a photo, go into properties, and details, and save information.

I first wanted to suggest naming the photo a 3 part number Lat#/Long#/#of Photo but that would create 15+ digit numbers and would be time consuming. The K20D also will not support such long names/numbers.

I can see that one day in the near future cameras will come with GPS features.  But for now......


Perhaps others here may have some ideas on the subject.

Good Luck George,

Spyglass

[blackcloudbrew]

Well actually Spydude is not quite correct.

I have owned and used this guy:

http://www.amazon.com/s?i...p;sourceid=Mozilla-search

Basically it works with any camera by synchronizing the clocks. After you do that, you turn it on, travel a bit, shoot some images, then return it to your computer and you will get a geotrack on Goggle Earth. If you put your photos there too will all work out. Honestly, I find the geotrack more than enough without putting the pictures there but you can do it. There are other brands of this kind of deal I believe.

Here is a track I did sometime ago. I didn't bother loading the pictures in to it for this image.

[spyglass]

But you still need a computer....  

Earl, when you say "put your photos there" does the Geotrack device come with software that  can automatically link the photos to points along the track by matching times?  Does it save the photo with the location information embedded. Or can you end up with a map with clickable links to the photos at points along the recorded track/route. What can you tell us about the interface.


Spyglass

[calsan]

There's also eye-fi cards with some sort of 'wifi' based geotagging, but read all the details on this page first.
http://www.eye.fi/how-it-works/features/geotagging

[blackcloudbrew]

But you still need a computer....  

Earl, when you say "put your photos there" does the Geotrack device come with software that  can automatically link the photos to points along the track by matching times?  Does it save the photo with the location information embedded. Or can you end up with a map with clickable links to the photos at points along the recorded track/route. What can you tell us about the interface.


Spyglass

The short answer is - yes it does all of that. I've found that this particular software likes jpegs not jpegs converted from raw files. I also note that the manufacture shows this device as out of stock. There are others like it out there and I think regular gps devices will do this too but the feature of something like this is it's size and that it's only used for geotracking photos.

The track I put up is one that I generated on a kayak paddle over flooded fields.

I have to say that while it's fun to use and to see where you were with photos, I haven't used it as much as I expected to.

[George Norkus]

Google seems to be the way. I can live with a GPS machine and later merge the info with the photos.

EYE-fi seems good but charges a yearly fee for the ability to use the GPS abilities from their card at Hotspots and at home.

PS: Pentax announced the Optio WG1-GPS with gps abilities, although it's a small camera.

[sarsonj]

Depends, what you mean "without computer". If yo mean that you don't want to manually enter each location for photo, you can also use smartphone software for geotagging. Those apps works like GPS datalogger - they store your location every minute or so and then desktop app can match those location with photos (using timestamp of photo & location).

There are many apps for this for iPhone or Android. You can try my Geotag Photos Pro (http://www.geotagphotos.net), it is definitely cheaper, that dedicated GPS logger.

Jindrich

[materialsguy]

There is supposed to be a hot shoe mounted GPS for the 645D in development or soon-to-be-released (see image).  It may work with other Pentax digital cameras as well.   

I have used a hot shoe mounted GPS device with my (now old) Nikon D200's for years; it is indispensable for retracing your steps when you are editing your photos from long road trip or similar expedition. It embeds the GPS data directly into an image's metadata, therefore it makes mapping your photos in Google Earth or Flickr very simple.

Until Pentax or third party developers come out with a dedicated GPS unit, I did purchase a GISTEQ Phototracker and software package.  The software will automatically geotag RAW files (DNG's).  However it did not arrive in time for my last road trip, so I have not tried it.