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PostPosted: Wed Mar 12, 2008 4:47 pm
by nolock
slug wrote:nolock:
Glad to see you noticed this already.
I've been looking at your photos while testing the maps feature since many of your photos already had GPS data in them.
Especially interesting since they have altitude data. Looks like a lot of fun flying around with a camera.

We're fixing the lat/long entry boxes to accept other formats besides decimal.
But I'm going through your photos right now and expect about 800 of yours to be mapped in a few minutes.
Hope you won't mind if I post a link to http://maps.pbase.com/nolock so other people can have a look.

Curious to know what hardware/software you used to get the GPS data into your JPEGs.


-slug


I was not doing geotagging prior to last May 2007, so photographs older than this will not contain the geotag data. All the images in these galleries are geotagged. Note that the geotag data is only contained in the 'original' versions.

http://www.pbase.com/nolock/homathko
http://www.pbase.com/nolock/compton
http://www.pbase.com/nolock/lillooet
http://www.pbase.com/nolock/qbesschilko


Here is a summary of how I geotag my images. I am not a geotagging expert by any means, but this system has worked well. It was not designed for aerial photography, and in this application I estimate accuracy of perhaps a tenth of a mile or less. 'Absolute' accuracy would cost many thousands of dollars (maybe as much as a hundred thousand, for the various gps equipment, autopilots, computers, etc.). I don't need that kind of accuracy.

I use the Sony GPS-CS1 device. It is one of several GPS track-file recording devices. It may not be the best one - there is at least one other right now that is cheaper, more sensitive, and records more track points.

Here is a list of devices, with reviews: http://scilib.typepad.com/techreviews/reviews-list.html

There are a few important points about accurate geotagging.

- The camera clock has to be set to "GPS" time. This is the time the gps is picking up from the satellites. If this step is not taken, the geotag data will not be accurate when the images are geotagged. Camera clocks tend to 'drift' a bit, so I reset the camera to gps time at least once during each flight, just to be safe. The Sony GPS-CS1 does not have a display, so you need a separate GPS unit with a display, that can show "GPS" time. Then manually set your camera to that time, as near as possible (nearest second would be best). This is slightly tricky but with practice you can be quite accurate.

- in general, the track recorder needs to have a clear view of the sky. Heavy forest canopy, or indoors, or among tall buildings, tends to inhibit/block the signal and degrade accuracy. The recorder may lose satellite contact altogether. In my situation, I use a bit of velcro to hold the device in place on top of the instrument panel glareshield, where it has a 360 deg view of the sky in normal level flight. The GPS-CS1 has a carabiner loop, so you could let it hang from a pack, say. Personally, I'd prefer to have it sitting up high so it would be more accurate (as opposed to hanging it from a belt loop, for example).

- I have not verified the accuracy of the altitude data. I have noted that in my case, it seems to definitely be in the ballpark, but I have not taken the time to write down and compare my indicated altitude for certain photographs.

- When I return from a flight and download/geotag images to the computer, I use Breeze System's 'Downloader Pro': http://www.breezesys.com/ - This outstanding software does the job quickly and accurately. The GPS-CS1 is first connected to the computer via USB cable. Then the CF card is inserted into the card reader. Downloader Pro compares the track file to the image time, and imprints the appropriate lat/long/altitude into each image. It interpolates the position if an image falls between two track points. This has proven quite accurate. Downloader Pro is not the most intuitive program to use, so make sure you are getting good geotag accuracy before you erase your storage cards. Make sure you know what time zone you are in, whether you are on daylight savings time or not, etc., so you will be able to enter the correct values in the GPS settings box in Downloader Pro. Copy and save the track log files from the recorder to a folder on your computer. You may need them again if something goes awry. Downloader Pro will create a Google Earth kml file from your track files, and it is interesting to look at these tracks in Google Earth. (another option for geotagging software: http://www.robogeo.com/home/ - this program seems to get good reviews in the various forums).

- Breeze System's 'BreezeBrowser' software does a good job of displaying EXIF (and geotag) data. However, I am am an Irfanview devotee (http://www.irfanview.com) for viewing EXIF and viewing geotagged images in Google Earth. Irfanview is free, highly capable, and fast. The "view this image in Google Earth" feature is terrific. This is found in the 'Image - Information - EXIF' panel when looking at an image. You must download and install all of Irfanview's plugins to have this feature. The plugins are free as well.

One of the big pitfalls of geotagging and GPS right now is that there is no industry standard for track file formats. So if you have different brands of tracking devices or GPS units with downloadable track files, you could very well run into difficulty trying to geotag your images. I cannot offer a good solution to this problem, other than to point you to http://www.gpsbabel.org where you will begin to get an idea of the difficulties of this issue.

This summarizes my approach. Hope that it may be helpful. It sounds complicated, but in practice, it has proven to be fairly simple.

PostPosted: Wed Mar 12, 2008 5:41 pm
by tremont
thanks much my friends, works like a charm with individual images.

it would be nice to drag them from a sidebar and onto the map instead of going to each image and geo-tag then go back to gallery choose photo edit geo-tag etc..

the gallery link didn't load for me in the existing sidebar.

win-XP, firefox, cable

PostPosted: Wed Mar 12, 2008 6:06 pm
by arjunrc
Great stuff. Thanks.

While I'd love a drag-drop facility, I had a possibly simpler request:

Consider making it simpler for us to geo-tag our images, even if you don't want to offer bulk-geotagging (re: Precision vs. Generality post by Slug)

So here is what I suggest:

When I go to one of my galleries, and attempt to "geotag" an image, I am taken to the maps page, where I use the excellent 'location search' tab to get my image location, and then save it. After this, just give me an option to skip to the "next" image in that gallery I came from, so I can do the same geotag operation. This way my flow remains consistent and I don't mind manually geotagging my images, since I don't have to keep changing navigation mechanisms.

regds
arjun

PostPosted: Wed Mar 12, 2008 6:26 pm
by arjunrc
Oh never mind my post above.
Looks like you already do what I wanted. Sorry about that.
regds
arjun

PostPosted: Wed Mar 12, 2008 10:28 pm
by ralf
Nice. I noticed one bug (Firefox, Linux, DSL): when I click the "map" link on my PaD gallery ( http://www.pbase.com/ralf/today ) the map display is blank, while when I use the same link on one of the recent months that I've now tagged (e.g. http://www.pbase.com/ralf/pad_2008_02 ) it works fine. Are subgalleries confusing the code?

PostPosted: Thu Mar 13, 2008 3:35 am
by frim
Seems to work A OK, I uploaded a few images that were taged with my GISTEQ and they are on the map where they belong. Nice new feature.

I use a GISTEQ geo tagger but if anyone needs free software to manually geotag alot of images this one is very handy.

download at http://www.locr.com

PostPosted: Thu Mar 13, 2008 2:50 pm
by slug
ralf,
ckirby has fixed that problem.
Thanks for pointing it out.

-slug

Awesome!

PostPosted: Thu Mar 13, 2008 3:46 pm
by yardbird
This is really cool. I am a total amateur at this and it took me a while to geo-tag just a few photos but I think it will be worth it at the end. I agree that quality is better than quantity though I wish I could geotag all my photos.

Might ahve to buy a camera with the in-built GPS soon. Hmm...

Keep up the good work guys!

Cheers
Karthik

Re: Awesome!

PostPosted: Thu Mar 13, 2008 6:47 pm
by nolock
yardbird wrote:
Might have to buy a camera with the in-built GPS soon. Hmm...



There is a bit of controversy on that - issues of camera battery usage, the need to keep the camera turned on in order to collect a complete track file, along with some folks wanting a track file when not doing photography. I'm not taking sides. Right now, though, I'm liking the external track recorder. Not perfect but pretty darn good, particularly when you consider the relatively modest cost.

This new feature is wonderful, by the way. I really couldn't have asked for more. Thanks admins!!

PostPosted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 1:41 am
by rakerman
nolock wrote:
slug wrote:nolock:
Curious to know what hardware/software you used to get the GPS data into your JPEGs.

-slug


I use the Sony GPS-CS1 device. It is one of several GPS track-file recording devices. It may not be the best one - there is at least one other right now that is cheaper, more sensitive, and records more track points.

Here is a list of devices, with reviews: http://scilib.typepad.com/techreviews/reviews-list.html



A lot of great points by nolock. Also thanks for pointing to my site :)

I mainly use one of my GPS loggers (the Qstarz BT-Q1000P is my current favourite) and then do time matching to get position using RoboGEO.

Also just a couple days ago I got a Nokia cameraphone with built-in GPS, so I can use Location Tagger beta to auto-geocode my photos in-camera.

It would be great if PBase was added as an option to Share Online on Nokia, is there a way to do this? Right now the options are, um, Flickr, Ovi and Vox.

Photos are managed in Picasa, however note: I just discovered Picasa damages GPS altitude information (lat/long it preserves ok).

I've put up a test album

http://www.pbase.com/rakerman/geotest

More info on the Picasa issue and geocoding in general can be found in my blog

http://scilib.typepad.com/techreviews/

and on my page o' info

http://www.akerman.ca/geocode-photos.html

It's great to see mapping on PBase.

PostPosted: Sat Mar 15, 2008 4:24 am
by djwixx
Certainly an interesting option, but there certainly needs to be an option to geotag galleries or multiple pictures in a gallery. I've just done one gallery (24 image) entering the same information time and time again for each image, which essentially made me decide not to do any others.

Great to see new features though.

PostPosted: Sat Mar 15, 2008 4:52 am
by slug
djwixx-
If you feel the need to geotag multiple photos in the exact same spot, you don't have to enter any information time and time again.
If you position one photo, then select another in the same gallery, it starts out in the same position. Just click save, click the next photo. Repeat.


-slug

PostPosted: Sat Mar 15, 2008 5:32 am
by djwixx
slug wrote:djwixx-
If you feel the need to geotag multiple photos in the exact same spot, you don't have to enter any information time and time again.
If you position one photo, then select another in the same gallery, it starts out in the same position. Just click save, click the next photo. Repeat.


-slug


Thanks. I tried that but ended up with several shots in the ocean off the west coast of Africa :shock: . I gather the number on the 'map pin' suggests a number of pictures at that location. I can understand 10+ as a simple way to referencing more than 10 pictures but was curious that when I put 6 shots in one location it shows at 2+.

I can certainly see it becoming something that grows on me and a great way to pin point locations for anyone else curious about what sites are where.

P.S. WinXPSP2, Firefox 2.0.0.12, Comcast cable 6Mb.

PostPosted: Sat Mar 15, 2008 1:54 pm
by rollosphotos
I have geotagged a few of my nature photos precisely. http://maps.pbase.com/rollosphotos/ This is a great feature for tracking species.

I think this option works great, it was easy to use and it will be a useful tool. Have we figured out a way to tag multiple photos yet? I am looking forward to the feature that would allow me to look up other photos by their geographic location. It will be wonderful to see the exact location for some of the fantastic photos posted by PBase members.

Map for password protected galleries?

PostPosted: Sat Mar 15, 2008 7:11 pm
by ray_t
For password protected galleries it seems that the map display only works for the owner, not logged in visitors. Logged in visitors get this message:

Locked Gallery
You do not have the permissions to view the gallery provided by the url.

Great feature but useless for me until this gets fixed.

Ray