Geotagging: What works for you?

I love photos and I love maps. So geotagging--labeling of photos with geographic metadata--is a technology that was tailor-made for me. I'm starting to look into the issue for a feature I'm writing.

But from my early testing so far, it's clear geotagging is nascent at best. Cameras don't support it, geotags generally have to be manually added to photo metadata, and the software to automate it a bit feels kludgy to me. Five years from now my camera will probably have a GPS receiver built in, or at least a port to add one easily, but for now it's far from seamless.

Which brings me to my request: What do you find works and doesn't work? I'm hoping to benefit from the collective research that readers of this blog have put into this domain.

Specifically, I'd like to know about which GPS units you use, which cameras integrate best with GPS, which track file formats you like, which Web sites you use to display tracks and geotagged photos, and which software you use to tag your photos--especially if you're tagging raw images as well as JPEGs. Do you like Google Earth? I'd love to hear about your negative experiences as well as positive.

Feel free to share comments here in the Talkback area below for the benefit of others, or send me e-mail directly.

[BlinkGeo]

Interesting Project - Looking forward to the results

Have asked others to contribute via BlinkGeo.

[jcloudm]

Complicated but it works

Here's how I do it (and I do it quite frequently). I use a Canon SD700IS for photos. I also carry around a Gisteq PhotoTrackr (http://www.gisteq.com/index-PT.html) for GPS tracking. It works very well once it gets that first fix in the morning of a travel day. However, it needs a pretty clear view of the sky to get that first fix. I don't like the software that comes with Gisteq, so I export a GPX file from the Gisteq software. I then import the GPX file and all my photos into Robogeo (http://www.robogeo.com). Robogeo puts the GPS data into the EXIF headers of my JPEG files. I then upload my JPEG files to Smugmug, which automatically recognizes the appropriate EXIF headers and can create a map of each photo and its location. Check out http://maps.smugmug.com/?feedType=geoAlbum&Data=3081031 for a recent example.

[daniel.logan]

Having Fun - but doing it manually

I've been trying out all sorts of options for a for-fun blog I'm experimenting with (http://travelingmunchies.blogspot.com). Currently, I've settled on using picasaweb.google.com to upload my photos, then I manually tag each one by using the embedded google map to pick out the location of each photo in the album.

[daniel.logan]

correction

bad link -- sorry. It is http://travelingmunchies.blogspot.com

[smorrish]

Geotagging

Hi Stephen
Delighted to hear that you are heading to Ireland which is where I hail from down south in the peoples republic of Cork http://www.peoplesrepublicofcork.com/ Be sure to keep a copy of http://www.corkslang.com/ as we have a language all of our own here.

Anyway on to your query about GeoTagging your images and your trip.
There are indeed a number of hardware options available at the moment one from Redhen systems http://www.redhensystems.com/ which have a number of solutions for users of Nikon's DX and D200 Digital SLR's
Another interesting system it that offered by RICOH the Ricoh 500SE which offers a fully integrated system which is ruggedized water resistant has a built in GPS unit and includes Wifi and Bluetooth for extra functionallity.

Other options if you want to use your own camera and a GPS requires you sync your cameras clock with the GPS before setting out. You will need to set the GPS to collect Track log along the way and will need to post proccess it using either commercial software or shareware to do this.

The other option is to use Googles Pica wich will allow you to geotagg your images individually using Google map interface which does not have the detailed coverage in Ireland that is available in the US you can then like the images to maps in either Flicker or Smugmug two imgage sharing sites that I have used in the past.

Hope this is of some help

By the way be sure to bring good Rain gear as June was the Wettest on record and July was not much better. We have had some sunny days so far this August but who knows.

Enjoy your trip smorrish

[Mourize]

www.locr.com

Speaking of ?Getagging?: do you know locr? locr offers the ideal solution and makes geotagging exceptionally easy. locr uses GoogleMaps with detailed maps and high-resolution satellite images. To geotag your photos just enter address, let locr search, fine-tune the marker, accept position, and done! If you don?t know the exact address simply use drag&drop to set the position.
For automatic geotagging you need a datalog GPS receiver in additon to your digital camera. The GPS receiver data and the digital camera data is then automatically linked together by the locr software. All information will be written into the EXIF header, and can then be used by other applications.
locr software is compatible to the most nokia phones that have GPS. Then everything is allready automated

[CascadeHush]

Yes folks, it's 2008, your camera maker is obsessed with giving you more and more megapixels and a 57 scene modes... and yet something so basic as a inbuilt GPS receiver still looks like it's years away. It's a kind of typical herd mentality that constantly leaves us lacking basic features we really need in devices we buy.

I have recently started using HoudahGeo for Mac, which links to Google Earth so you can map where you've been without needing GPS data. Frankly it's unstable and un-intuitive but it's the best solution I've seen so far.

A basic GPS should add less than $100 to the cost of a camera, so there is no excuse for not seeing this as an option in some of the mid-range P&S cameras, and all the dSLRs should have this... if they can't fit it inside the camera they could fit it in the battery grip, which would be nice since they are drastically overpriced for what they are.

In the mean time the best option for geotagging is probably not geotagging per-se, but just keeping things organised with keywords so you have at least some idea of where you where when you took the photo.

I mostly use software to geotag my picture collection, mostly since I already have tons of digital pictures from past years. I've found Panorado Flyer (http://www.panorado.com/en/PanoradoFlyer.php) to be very helpful, especially since it connects to Google Earth and captures its 3D-Information like azimuth and tilt, too.
And once the data is in the pictures, a tools like CDWinder (http://www.cdwinder.de) is a blast in blazing through my collection and finding those pics geographically (e.g. all pictures taken at a specific place) or based on other IPTC or EXIF tags...
I find it's a great way to enhance a digital image collection !