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Tagging Photos With GPS Coordinates
ptorrone writes "As part of a camera mod project to make a low-cost aerial photography device we started finding other uses for the camera hack. This first part of this series is tagging photos with GPS coordinates by automating a camera and GPS unit, it's a DIY Black Box for now with interesting applications and other uses. Ideally, this may encourage the next EXIF data schema to support GPS and other information."
This would be great if it also tagged the direction of the photo as well as the focal length.
That way some sort of virtual vacation wiki could be constructed from it.
But instead of a specific data source (the GPS unit), why not develop a standard and just have a data plug in the side of the cam to plug *whatever* data source into? GPS, keyboard, clock, speedometer, altimeter, whatever ...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
This would be really slick for storm-chasing. Often times you find yourself in the middle of [some flat state] taking pictures of a storm, and once you go home you may very well forget exactly where you were.
Also, I recently saw a TV show where they had to track down a killer based off of some digital pictures a murder victim had snapped shortly before getting killed. This technology would have made that murder much easier to solve... of course this probably has never happened in real life.
The biggest problem I see with GPS and cameras [digital] right now is battery life. Get GPS fixes from the necessary satellites can really run down your batteries fast. This is one area where camera phone may have a advantage; if they are GPS enabled (i.e. motorla iDen, etc.) and can use AGPS from the phone network, it may help with battery life. Nevertheless, as GPS receivers become more efficient, I can see them being integerated in to cameras to provide this type of information. It would actually make for a great vacation application. Take photos with GPS coords, upload photos to computer, computer has an app that "maps" your photos to where they were taken on a global/regional map. Throw in the dates and the app could construct a trip timelime showing all the locations where you took your photos (all the while playing the Family Vacation theme song).
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
Imagine thousands of Flightgear fans all taking pictures from hilltops and airplanes and submitting them to a server that performs geometric transformations on the images, per the location data, and adds to a downloadable database of free scenery.
This isn't my web site but I wish it were:
http://www.geosnapper.com/
There exist Japan only (not ever marketed in the US) point and shoot cameras that already record GPS data directly. (Rioch... and some other brand I haven't heard of.)
And of course various Nikon pro models have this capacity, such as that used here:
http://www.californiacoastline.org/
In the same vein, check out:
http://apps.ecy.wa.gov/shorephotos/index.html
I haven't evaluated this: http://www.robogeo.com/home/
But I do own this, and it works well, as advertised to get a GPS read for each time at which you take a picture: http://www.geospatialexperts.com/
At the above location, they happen to sell the Ricoh model that can record GPS out of the box.