I forgot to mention that I bought an unnecessarily-expensive toy recently
I forgot to mention that I bought an unnecessarily-expensive toy recently ... doing my bit for capitalism! And it's lots of fun, besides.
At a high-end electronics shop today, I overheard an earnest young salesman explaining all about computers to a new...
At a high-end electronics shop today, I overheard an earnest young salesman explaining all about computers to a new customer: "You can use three different operating systems on a computer -- Apple, HP, and Google."
If your GPS doesn't come with trail maps, on http://www.switchbacks.com, you can get free trail maps for the Pacific Northwest region, which I'm pretty sure includes Montana. The guy who made them started from Forest Service maps and added from there. He's a tester at Groundspeak (the Geocaching firm). His maps are truly amazing for the price (free). I have them. Work incredibly well on my Garmin Dakota 10 (which isn't as fancy as yours, of course, but still great). Also, many apps exist for inserting gps data into pictures. All you have to do is sync up the time in your camera and your GPS so they're the same. When you get back from your hike or whatever, use software to automate adding the GPS data to the pics. The GPS/Picture syncer I use is GPICSync, but I don't think it works on a MAC. But others exist. If you're like me and take hundreds of foresty-looking pictures, it's nice having the GPS data in them so you can remember 5 years from now where you took them.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the note, Teresa! The great availability of public-domain maps was one of the things that drew me towards the Garmin units, and I've been having lots of fun playing with some of them. I've already downloaded the Northwest Trails dataset that the Switchbacks guy offers, and the Montana portion of it at least is excellent. (His topo maps only include a small portion of the state, though.)
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah, one of the main reasons i wanted to get this is to geotag photos. I catalogue my photos in an Apple program called Aperture, which includes a very cool map feature, and I suspect there's a plugin for that program that will allow me to use data from the GPS unit. Haven't started investigating that yet, though ...
Absolutely agree. That's why I chose the Garmin units as well. It's too bad the Switchbacks maps don't have Topo maps for Montana. I find them quite helpful here in Washington! If Aperture or an Aperture plug-in don't do what you need, here's a list of automated geotagging software: http://code.google.com/p/gpicsync/wiki/OtherGeocodingSoftware. A couple of them are for the Mac. I should note that sometimes (rarely) camera software doesn't write the correct version of Exif and thus doesn't have the fields for adding GPS info to files. If that's the case with yours, get a new camera ;-). But as I've said, it's rare....I assume it's not so in your case, since you're already geotagging your photos already via Aperture? but figured I should mention it.
ReplyDeleteA little bit of pain if your camera doesn't adjust for daylight saving/standard time (many of the newer point and shoots do)..... When spring forward or fall-back arrive, you have to remember to change the time in the camera before taking pictures so the geotagging is accurate. If you forget to do so, the work around is to go into your geotagging software and adjust the UTF offset (the offset from Greenwich Mean Time, since GPS' use GMT to record time) to account for the bogus time your camera stored in your photos. I forgot to change my camera clock a couple of times and didn't realize it until I'd geotagged a number of photos an hour away from where they actually were taken! You can always go back and correct the geotag (by adjusting the UTF offset to the bogus offset and rerunning the software on the files), but what a pain. Anyway, telling you so you hopefully don't suffer from my pain ;-).
ReplyDeleteAnyway, if you happen to have questions, I have answers, mostly not lies ;-).
It's a tool, not a toy. At least that's how I justify having bought all my power TOOLS :)
ReplyDeletePatrick Stephenson The very best objects in the world are those that are both tools and toys ... though sometimes it takes exactly the right person to recognize the connection. :)
ReplyDeleteTeresa Atkinson Thanks for all the info! Did some more reading, and apparently Aperture has the built-in ability to import GPS tracks and associate them with one's photos ... which is excellent. (Neither of my cameras has geotagging capability built-in, which I'm fine with because I've heard lots of complaints about the accuracy of camera GPS sensors.)
As for time offsets and stuff, I'm all too familiar with those problems! I'm constantly forgetting to adjust my camera's time zone and such, and then having to go back to adjust the EXIF data later. First world problems, as they say ...
You were smart getting the tool you chose. Few cameras have geotagging, and you're right, when they have it it's lame. The little portable GPS' you can buy just for geotagging photos are costly and not that great. And phones aren't the way to go either, since often we lose cell service in the woods long before we would lose GPS satellite service. The lame GPS in phones is probably just as lame as in the cameras..
ReplyDeleteYour GPS also has a NMEA 0183 compatible communications port, which means that if you were to buy the right DSLR camera, you could hook the GPS directly to the camera and geotag photos on the fly. With certain Nikon DSLRs this hookup is relatively easy and inexpensive. With Canons (right now), it's prohibitively expensive, I think. But hopefully times will change.
Well, I bought the thing mostly for backcountry navigation ... the photo geotagging is just a nice little bonus. (I'm so far behind in cataloguing my photos that it's all a lost cause, anyway!) But the photo GPS will still be nice, since if I never get around to tagging my photos the GPS coordinates will at least be there to tell me where I was. :)
ReplyDeleteAs for cameras, I'm an unabashed Nikon SLR fan, and most of my non-backcountry stuff is shot with Nikon gear. When I'm backpacking, though, I sometimes just carry a little Panasonic Lumix point-and-shoot, which does a pretty good job with landscapes. Canons are totally off the radar for me. :)
Oh yeah, back country navigation, forgot about that little side benefit of GPS ;-). Yours should be great for that. If the marketing is correct, it locks signal really fast and keeps it. Although I wouldn't classify my hiking destinations as back country (3-6 miles out) I love following the trail with mine. I'm much more successful at reaching my destination if I know how far we've gone and how far we still need to go! And its great for discovering trails that haven't made it (over and over again) into the hiking books. Go out to a spot with the Switchbacks.com map set and see what you find! Mine is a Dakota 10, so lightweight compared to yours At first the lack of a barometric altimeter in mine made me feel like a stepchild ;-), but last week on a particularly steep hike we took to a paraglider launch, I decided that I'd rather not know how far I had left to CLIMB ;-). So now, the lack is not a bug, it's a feature!
ReplyDeleteAs someone intrenched in Canon, I'll say that any of the modern day DSLRs are amazingly capable cameras and that each certainly has its benefits. Nikon definitely implemented its GPS capability in a much more user friendly manner. Awhile back, I actually considered switching to Nikon, but I found that I'd have to pay far more for the Nikon versions of the lenses I had or wanted than for the Canon versions, so I stuck with Canon. Besides, I like the pretty little red rings around some of the Canon lenses ;-) although I'm sure a little creative work with a magic marker would have fixed that problem in the Nikons in no time ;-).
Enjoy your tool!
Mark, if I get one, will it tell me where I parked my car? You're smart to have a Lumix P&S- I like mine so much that I (gasp!) sold my DSLR even though I'm a real photographer. Love those Leica optics and the portability.
ReplyDeleteErica Brown -- Actually, it will! You just have to remember to turn it on beforehand, which would be my problem. :)
ReplyDeleteThis is my second Lumix, and I'm definitely very pleased with the thing. It's not quite up to the level of the Nikon, though, and I can nearly always notice a difference in the results. (At least partly, it's in the camera's internal software ... the Lumix post-processing seems to be tuned more to making "snapshots," if that makes sense.)
Teresa Atkinson -- Yep, it's definitely true that pretty much all the current-day DSLRs are amazingly capable cameras ... much more capable than I am as a photographer, at any rate! :) I do prefer the Nikon glass, though, and especially Nikon's ergonomics ... their cameras just "fit" me better than Canons, for some reason. I'm not religious about that preference, though, and will gladly go slumming with Canon people. :-p
Yep, cameras are a little like gloves. Each fits differently on different people. Lenses, debateable ;-). I think the "religion" around gear is a bit of a sign of poor confidence in the choice made....amazes me that some people are about that. I may become a hybrid "Nikon/Canon girl" yet, since Nikon may release their mirrorless cameras before Canon does. I'd love to have a big sensor camera that is compact enough for hiking. Nikon is supposed to have an announcement at the end of September and rumors say it's the Mirrorless. Crossing my fingers.
ReplyDelete