GeoTagger Adds Positioning Info to Snapshots

Richard Jelbert writes "Check out this hardware device to geo-tag your photos to help share / manage your photos using Google maps. The Jelbert GeoTagger device records the latitude and longitude and compass direction of every photo you take. It connects to the camera flash shoe and stores the geo metadata on an SD memory card. Geotagging is becomeing more and more popular with sites like Flickr supporting geotagging via Google Earth interface. Hardware geotagers save you the effort of geo-tagging the images manually after taking the shot. The Sony geotagger is a great step forward but the Jelbert GeoTagger also records direction data."

Comments

Re:Practical uses?

[cayenne8]

Is this really that useful for the public in general, or is this more of a tool for the authorities to use to better locate and document crime scenes, if the picture was taken at one?

I just heard the other day about some kind of 'mark' that digital cameras put on all images, that notate what type camera you have...and some of the programs put registration information on the images (name, etc).

I'm not sure I want all that meta data on pictures I take...just a simple picture thank you.

(I forgot the name of that tag..starts with an "E" I think.

Re:Practical uses?

[nairnr]

Pratical Uses? I can think of quite a few. When I go on vacation, I find the meta data from digital very useful. Most cameras will put EXIF data in the image recording such things as the specific camera you shoot with, your exposure time, aperature, what mode you shot with... You can use it to adjust how you take your shots if you shot with different settings.
As far as geotagging, it gives you the flexibility to organize your photos by location, and add in that info to your photo. I went on a month long trip and can't remember where every shot I took was. This would have been an excellent way of keeping track without requiring me to take additional notes to correlate back to my photos.

Re:Practical uses?

[ejp1082]

Well said.

The other major purpose of this is for historical benefit. Imagine, for example, that we had Geotagging+Timestamping on all the photos taken in the last 30 years, and they were shared on something like Flickr. You could focus on a particular place and build a timeline of photos to see how it changes over the years. Given the ubiquity of camera phones, digital cameras, etc, we could have a complete photo-historical record of, well, almost everything.

Personally, I've gone through all my "good" photos recently (over 500 of em) and geotagged them by hand with Picasa and Google Earth (and now I'm in the middle of the laborious task of replacing them all on Flickr) for no other reason than I think it's neat - I like being able to display them out on a map to show people. I think it's a much more interesting way of visualizing them than the standard coffee table photo album.

That and I can't tell you how many times I've gone through my Grandparent's photo albums and the conversation went something like this:

"Wow, when was this taken?"
"Don't remember exactly. Sometime in the 60's."
"Where was this?"
"Arizona, I think. Or maybe it was when we went to California."
"Who is this?"
"Don't remember. Frank? Is that Frank? I think it's Frank."

So yeah, I think metadata is a good thing.