Geotagging Software

[idcrewdawg]

So I went on an outing and took about 300 pictures during the outing. I took along a hand-held GPS that is popular with geocaching folks. Once I got back I thought perhaps I could see about doing some geotagging. When I tried the times of the photos and the GPS were off, so they didn't match up to auto tag.

My question; what software (free preferably) have you used successfully in geotagging?

I did successfully mesh my geo-location and Google Earth, which was pretty cool to see. Just didn't get the geotagging to work. Though on my next outing now that I have the computer, the GPS and the camera sync'd for the clocks I hope to have more success.

[inkista]

A lot of the synching packages out there will let you put an offset in for the photo timestamps, to workaround the problem (not to mention that some GPS units don't do the daylight savings thing when they do trackfiles). I'm on a mac, so I use gpsphotolinker, and it has this ability. So, maybe hunting up another geotagging package might work. I believe gpicsync can do it, too.

The other possibility is writing a perl script or use exiftool to hack the timestamps in the trackfile or photos, but that's for hardcore geeks. :^)

[B..]

Yeah, everything inkista says agrees with what I understand.

For those new to the notion (as I was two weeks ago), the problem is that most geotagging software will apply a time and location of when you *download* your images ... not the time and location of when you *took* your photos. And that's even true of many the so-called "geo-tagging" cameras. They don't really have GPS capability, but they fake it, by using data from the computer you're using to download.

Our ipod Touch does the same thing. We wondered how it "knew" where we were. The answer is, it has a database of all the wireless connection points and their geo-locations. And it knows which ones our ipod Touch could access. And then it triangulates from the data it has.

A few cameras truly have GPS capability. Not least, the iPhone (but not the iTouch). Don't know whether any seriously capable cameras have GPS capability ...

[inkista]

Originally Posted by B..

For those new to the notion (as I was two weeks ago), the problem is that most geotagging software will apply a time and location of when you *download* your images ... not the time and location of when you *took* your photos. ...

Actually, I've never run into that one before. That completely defeats the purpose of geotagging. That sounds like someone goofed up coding the synching software so that it was looking at the wrong EXIF field, or that your camera screws up its timestamps.

Most of the time, for me, the problems occur because of timezone changes, daylight savings switches, or my camera's clock not being particularly precise. Usually just synching up my camera's clock to an atomic clock on the 'net gets me close enough for jazz, since the GPS device is pretty much synching up its clock the same way. GPS is all about keeping accurate time, after all.