Canon GPS Receiver
I’ve started geotagging my photographs recently, now that Adobe Lightroom supports mapping (since last year’s V4 release) it’s a relatively straightforward job – simply drag the picture onto the map and job done. At least it is if you know exactly where the photograph was taken from…
That is where the GPS Receiver comes in. I’ve found too frequently that Google Maps doesn’t show me some locations at a resolution I’m happy with – cities are fine, the wilds of India, China and Spain leave something to be desired – the result is that many of my pictures are approximately geotagged.
I’m a technologist and ‘approximately’ doesn’t cut it for me. The crunch came when I was applying for insurance on our house in the Alpujarras. Rural cortijos don’t often have a postcode, or even an address. So the insurance company asked for the co-ordinates. “Find it on Google maps” they said “..and just send us the location”. “Aha” I thought, “How very modern!”. I then discovered that Google had omitted to send one of their street cars into the low Alpujarras and making the house out on the map was something of a challenge. It occurred to me then that the best way of locating the house beyond any doubt would be to pin it down with a GPS receiver.
The Canon GPS-E2 is a pretty remarkable piece of kit. It works with with the 1D, 5D and 7D cameras, (on the 7D you have to plug it into the USB port, on the 5D it just sits unobtrusively on the flash plate). It takes a single AA battery (not supplied) and once it is locked on, will provide Google Maps compatible coordinates, altitude and direction data to the EXIF fields embedded in each image. This means that when the photograph is uploaded to Flickr or submitted to Panoramio, the location is automatically recorded.
Additionally, the system will record the complete sequence of a journey. This can be downloaded to the suppplied software and be embedded in a map for use in a blog post for example. It functions in this mode, separately from the camera, so if the mapping capability is what’s wanted it just sits on your belt and records your movements every few seconds.
So what are the alternatives? iPhone certainly, and probably most other smartphones, supports GPS based location services as a matter of course. That’s great as long as you are using the iPhone. I habitually take an iPhone picture of all the locations I visit, so it is possible for me to pinpoint most places, its just that there is no smooth workflow to getting the data applied to pictures taken on other devices. Its a manual process. This little gadget just works. Straight out of the box. Well, straight out of the box after a Firmware update has been applied. (My 5D Mk III purchased last October needed April’s 1.3.1 update to recognise the device.)
In summary, if you are a travel or landscape photographer and want to share location data or even record it for your own purposes, this is a great tool. One caveat – probably best not to broadcast the exact coordinates of your house. You never know who’s looking!