Earlier this year, I blogged about my experiences with the Sony GPS-CS1 GPS datalogger. It was not the device I had hoped for, so I decided to try the Amod AGL3080.
The Amod has been a good choice. It works well with my Mac, has good battery life, and is decently accurate. When the device is connected to the computer via a USB cable, it shows up as a removable drive. To retrieve the GPS logs, simply copy them from the removable drive. This is ideal, because no special drivers are needed to use the device. The logs are written as a plain text file, in a format recognized as “Sony LOG”.
The Amod captures a data point every second and writes the data to a file. When the device is power cycled, it starts a new file. I use this to my advantage by starting a new file when I change the CF card in my camera. That way I know that each GPS log file corresponds to the shots on a card. One thing to be aware of is that the Amod device can take several minutes to acquire a signal, especially if it is in an area with a lot of tall buildings. It’s not a bad idea to power it up and wait for the indicator light to start flashing, indicating that it has acquired a signal, before starting to shoot.
Once I have finished a shoot, I tag all the shots prior to processing. Tagging the RAW files first ensures that the geotag metadata will follow the files around no matter what I do with them later. So before importing the photos to Aperture, I do the following:
- Connect the Amod via USB and copy the logs to a GPS folder on my Desktop
- Delete the logs from the Amod unit, and eject the device
- Copy the photos from my CF cards to folders on my Desktop, divided so that each folder is a batch of photos that has a single GPS log file associated with it
- Convert each GPS log to GPX format using HoudaGPS. Here are the settings to convert from the logs the AGL3080 creates to GPX format:
- Tag each batch of photos using GPSPhotoLinker:
HoudaGPS Ready To Convert
Batch Tagging with GPSPhotoLinker
Now all the photos have the geographic data associated with them. I can import them into Aperture, process them, export them, and upload them. The geotags stay with the photos just like any other EXIF data, and I don’t have to worry about doing anything else.
If you’re looking for a way to capture GPS data to tag your photos, the Amod AGL3080 is tough to beat.
Update: I have finally written my next Workflow post, Photo Workflow Using Aperture
Whoa that seems horrendously complicated! The step where you have to tag photos with the GPS data by hand can be entirely automated, as long as your GPS device and Camera have roughly the same time on them.
See my post from a while ago about how to automate the entire process and do it on the cheap
http://blog.bluemonki.net/2008/07/16/how-to-automaticallyautomagically-geotag-your-photos-using-open-source-stuffs/
I guess the new Nikon D90 will make this even more simple.
Hey Jeremy my I left a comment yesterday but it seems to have disappeared — did Akismet eat it?
bluemonki: Askimet ate it, yes. It’s recovered now.
The step of tagging the photos is automated. GPSPhotoLinker compares the timestamps in the GPS log to the timestamps in the photo and uses the closest match. It would be nice if it could also convert the .log files to GPX format; that would save a step. The current version of GPSPhotoLinker can read tracks directly from some devices such as the Garmin and Magellan devices, but I don’t have one of those, so I cannot comment on how well that works.
It might seem complicated because I broke the steps down quite a bit, but basically it is the same process that you have outlined in your post.
And the tools are all free.
[...] just today I was browsing around FriendFeed and came across this thread. Jeremy Brooks points out his method for geotagging his photos, which in the end, it’s probably better and quicker then my current [...]
[...] This is my second Workflow post. Previously, I talked about My Geotagging Workflow. [...]
[...] detailed my geotagging and Aperture workflows on my blog [...]