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Houdahgeo vs photolinker1/10/2024 ![]() ![]() All we are waiting for is for Sony to release a GPS module and a minor firmware update (the menu entries are already there). Now the new camera models complete the jigsaw. The connections have been in the MFA shoe since 2010. So, in place of your Bluetooth phone GPS, you will hopefully be able to fit a camera-top GPS module similar to those used by Canon and Nikon (who built the GPS data writing ability into their firmware years ago). They don’t have the ready-made menu options either. Other models, which can not use the phone/Bluetooth solution, presumably do not have this firmware and the built-in protocols for acquiring, writing and validating. JPG files without needing any time synchronisation. What’s really, really important is that these new Sony models have the firmware, interface connections and data handling to acquire a real-time or most recent position data packet from a stream, and inject this into your. ![]() Now the processor has everything needed to make it work. That shoe has a GPS data channel – so far, unused. Olympus relies on time synchronisation and an ‘end of day’ in-camera, wireless addition of the GPS data not unlike the process you might use with a separate tracker and a program like HoudahGeo or Photolinker. Essentially, Sony maintains a live link to the phone while you are shooting and acquires the GPS data to embed every time you make an exposure. Sorry if this sounds a bit complex but it’s not. At the end of the shoot, you connect again to the camera and initiate a transfer of the GPS track to the camera, which then parses it and embeds the co-ordinates closest to the timing of each exposure into the image files. ![]() I have not enjoyed the Olympus method either – you synchronise the phone GPS app timecode and the camera time setting once using WiFi and after this you can turn WiFi off on the camera, leave the tracking app running on the phone, and shoot. I have not found the A6500 pairing with iPhone all that reliable or persistent between sessions out of range or turned off. This is significantly different from the Olympus solution (above), which I have also been testing alongside Sony’s. It needs no additional app on the camera. Sony have added the I/O part of the data flow which puts geo data into the metadata fields of image files to the processor of the A9, A6500, RX10 MkIV (I think) and now the A7RIII – and in all three, they’ve put a 2.4GHz Bluetooth I/O process which can communicate with smartphones running their own GPS tracking app and grab the data every time you press the shutter. For accuracy, something twice this scale mounted on the hotshoe would be a powerful four-aerial 2xAA cell or lith-ion powered GPS receiver. This is a simulation using a retouched Elinchrom Skyport trigger – about the smallest size a GPS could be expected to be. They have put the rest of the architecture into the new cameras to make a GPS hardware module for the accessory shoe possible, practical, easy to implement and maybe even affordable (especially if third party makers come to the party). But they prepped the Multi Function Accessory Shoe to be used with a GPS module – and I believe it will be on the market soon. They pioneered it in the A55, refined it in the A77, A65 and A99 – and abandoned it without a word in all later A-mount cameras and the entire E-mount series. I like to use exiftool to add camera tags and lens data to scans.Sony can make GPS work. If you are comfortable with the Terminal, you can geocode a folder with image files or single images using the free exiftool: And I can also add altitude data, which is not possible, when moving pins on a map. This way, the GPS will be written to the original image fie. That is why I prefer to do the geotagging before importing into aperture. If you want to write the GPS data to the original image files, you'll have to export the versions. You can use the Lift&Stamp tool to stamp the location to other photos taken at the same place. When you tag an image in Aperture, the location will be added to the version, but not written to the original. Until "Photos.app" for mac has the capability to add location data, you can continue to use Aperture or iPhoto to add locations. Sooner or later Apple will have to add a tool to add location data to images in Photos, or the "Moments" will be pretty useless. If the photos do not have location information the library structure is only based on the time or on (smart) albums. The Photos.app relies heavily on the geo tags for photos to structure the Photos library automatically into "Moments". Hopefully Aperture will function long enough for Photos to "acquire" the ability. Also, with the demise of Aperture, and Photos having "lost" that capability, I figure I will need something anyway.
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