Location, Location, Location
Monday, August 10th, 2009 by EdYou’re back from the holiday of a lifetime, with bags full of souvenirs & duty-free. Somewhere at the bottom are a stack of memory cards containing the thousands of photos you took. When you get around to actually sorting through them and picking your favourite shots, you find yourself struggling to remember where and when everything happened. You remember taking this shot at the top of the Empire State Building, but which beach where you at when that one was taken? Time to consider geotagging.
Geotagging? What?
When you take a photo on a digital camera, the camera typically records the time and date the photo was taken. When you transfer your photos onto a computer, you can then easily organise your photos by when they were taken. That’s time sorted out, but what about space? Geotagging allows you to record when the photo was taken (e.g. by adding the latitude and longitude).
So why would I want to do this again?
Most basically, you can use it to show a group of your photographs on a map; for example, above is a set of photos I took on a guided walk along the Thames Path, displayed on Google’s Panoramio service.
And here’s the Bexcentric blog’s attempt to navigate the rather pedestrian-unfriendly route between two nearby train stations mapped out using photos uploaded to Flickr.
It also makes it easier to dig out holiday snaps quickly; open the map, find the place you went to and the pictures you took there will pop up.
There are some fun things you can do with your geotagged photos: elsewhere on Flickr, you can look at photos other people have taken near the locations of your own shots. Maybe you’ll feel inspired to go back and expand your repertoire of photographic tricks!
Can I do it without a degree in cartography?
All this isn’t as tremendously complicated as it might seem; you can do it automatically using a GPS receiver to check & record the location as you take a shot, or, when you’re back at your computer, you can use one of several photo-hosting services that provide tools to let you drag and drop your photos on to a map.
Sounds good, but I don’t like the sound of dragging all my photos into position one-by-one!
For ultra-convenience, the Nikon Coolpix P6000 is a compact digital camera with a built-in GPS receiver, which will automatically geotag all your shots when activated, as well as being a fine piece of kit all-round (currently rated 9.2 by reviewers on reevoo.com).
But can’t I just use my camera? I like my camera!
Yes, you can automate geotagging even if your camera doesn’t directly support it, with a range of accessories. The Sony GPS-CS3KA works by logging your location as you carry it around, taking photos. Once you’re done, you take your memory card out of your camera, insert it into the logger, and it matches where it was at any given time against the time the photos were taken.
Depending on your camera, you may be able to purchase a specially designed add-on, like the Nikon GP-1, which can be connected to a variety of Nikon’s DSLR cameras to give them GPS functionality.
The Eye-Fi Explore Video is a brilliant little idea - a camera memory card with built-in wireless network access (so you can send photos straight from your camera to the internet) & automatic geotagging (calculating locations based on nearby wireless networks), allowing you to add these extra functions to any camera that can read SDHC memory cards. Sadly it’s not yet available in the UK, but I’m crossing my fingers that it or something similar will get here eventually.
Finally, a note of warning. As wonderful as all this technology is, you might want to be wary of having every photo you put online geotagged; there could be unforeseen consequences of advertising the precise location of your brand new flatscreen television, for instance.
Useful Links
Don't miss an article, click here to get DWTB by RSS
