Pixiq

So you’ve been geo-tagging your photos manually? Not such a bad idea, but wouldn’t it be nicer if your camera could just remember where photos were taken themselves, and embed it into the files?

Prayers. Answered. Foolography have just launched a load of new GPS modules for Nikon cameras; it takes the data from a Bluetooth GPS receiver, transfers it to the camera via a small USB dongle, and then writes the location the photos are taken directly to your EXIF data of your files. Clever.

The unleashed unit cost around €149 each.

So, what’s geotagging?

Geotagging is a fast-growing trend in digital photography. It is the adding of GPS location data to digital photos. The exact position where a picture was taken will be stored automatically in its metadata.

Geotagging. Clever technology.

There are different geotagging methods:

1. Manual geotagging: This is the most complicated and tedious way of geotagging photos – but you can use it to geotag older pictures. It basically works by using special software or a web service, in which one photo after another of your archive is shown to you, along with a map. On the map, you then have to manually pinpoint the position from which you took the photo.

2. Indirect geotagging: A GPS logger stores its position every few seconds, including a timestamp so that these points can be matched to photos taken at the according time, using synchronization software. Then the position at which it was taken is stored within each photo.

3. Direct geotagging: A GPS device receives signals sent from several GPS satellites and uses this information to calculate its exact position. The GPS sends the coordinates of its current location to the camera, which in turn stores these coordinates in each photo when it is taken.

Foolography’s products use direct geotagging. Here, everything happens directly in the camera, right when the picture is taken, meaning no synchronization of clocks and no extra step at the computer is needed. Properly nifty stuff.

Check out the Foolography website for the full skinny!