Jobo Photo GPS

Wilt wrote in post #7220623
One fundamental advantage of the Jobo is the fact that it only records positions when you press the shutter button...it does not have hundreds of thousands of extraneous positions in a log file which rely upon synchronization of the camera time and GPS time in order to pair the position to the photo.

The downside is the need to mount the Jobo in the hot shoe (or, I presume it has a capability to be tethered to a camera with a PC cord, which itself is bothersome).

Yeah, I think its actually a neat idea, but using the hotshoe is a deal killer for me. Given the size of a GPS log file, and current software that easily allows time syncronization, even thousands of waypoints and time mismatch isn't a big deal so long as you can do some math. Canon's grip+GPS solution seems overly cumbersome as well, I need a grip + GPS unit... when I could just leave the GPS unit attached to my belt or bag and sync later.

While I like technology, I also like simplicity. Right now for my use for geotagging it still seems a good GPS unit and tagging images later is still the best solution. I know I personally would rather have built in GPS functionality than a print button, but hey =)

Does anyone, other than Grandpa Bob, use the Print button?!

nadtz wrote in post #7221757
Yeah, I think its actually a neat idea, but using the hotshoe is a deal killer for me. Given the size of a GPS log file, and current software that easily allows time syncronization, even thousands of waypoints and time mismatch isn't a big deal so long as you can do some math. Canon's grip+GPS solution seems overly cumbersome as well, I need a grip + GPS unit... when I could just leave the GPS unit attached to my belt or bag and sync later.

While I like technology, I also like simplicity. Right now for my use for geotagging it still seems a good GPS unit and tagging images later is still the best solution. I know I personally would rather have built in GPS functionality than a print button, but hey =)

I wasn't planning on bringing my flash along, so the only thing I'd lose out on is my hotshoe level (which I admit, I do use quite a bit...)

Wilt wrote in post #7221843
Does anyone, other than Grandpa Bob, use the Print button?!

Don't have one of those on my camera :P

I use a Garmin GPSMap 76Csx that records the track data to a Micro SD card installed in the unit. When I'm ready to download my pictures to the computer, I connect the GPS to the computer via USB and the computer reads it as a drive. I use DownloaderPro to download and it reads the track data in the GPS, matches it to the time the photo was taken and if there's a match, it writes the coordinate data to an xmp sidecar file in the same folder it downloads the RAW images to.

Wilt wrote in post #7220623
One fundamental advantage of the Jobo is the fact that it only records positions when you press the shutter button...it does not have hundreds of thousands of extraneous positions in a log file which rely upon synchronization of the camera time and GPS time in order to pair the position to the photo.

The downside is the need to mount the Jobo in the hot shoe (or, I presume it has a capability to be tethered to a camera with a PC cord, which itself is bothersome).

How fast are you moving between shots that a minute (even) time difference will throw off your location by much at all? The software solutions I've seen that use a conventional GPS track have also got provisions for entering (once) the time difference between your GPS and your camera and automatically applying that to the track data when matching. "Extraneous" position data's ignored by the program when it's matching.

Jon wrote in post #7226057
How fast are you moving between shots that a minute (even) time difference will throw off your location by much at all? The software solutions I've seen that use a conventional GPS track have also got provisions for entering (once) the time difference between your GPS and your camera and automatically applying that to the track data when matching. "Extraneous" position data's ignored by the program when it's matching.

Jon,
I know 'the solution'. One issue is whether or not there is a good utility to synch the camera time with GPS time, or if there is an easy way to calculate the differential between them. For most purposes error in time may not mean a really large difference in time, but imagine that an error of 2 minutes existed in the computation of the time difference and you happened to by flying over Hawaii in a helicopter...it might show you in the wrong place by 300' and plot the photo on the map in the wrong location by that much.

Wilt wrote in post #7227627
Jon,
I know 'the solution'. One issue is whether or not there is a good utility to synch the camera time with GPS time, or if there is an easy way to calculate the differential between them. For most purposes error in time may not mean a really large difference in time, but imagine that an error of 2 minutes existed in the computation of the time difference and you happened to by flying over Hawaii in a helicopter...it might show you in the wrong place by 300' and plot the photo on the map in the wrong location by that much.

I always double check the time on my gps (merax) and camera before travelling, once set, there is only seconds of variance.

Wilt wrote in post #7227627
Jon,
I know 'the solution'. One issue is whether or not there is a good utility to synch the camera time with GPS time, or if there is an easy way to calculate the differential between them. For most purposes error in time may not mean a really large difference in time, but imagine that an error of 2 minutes existed in the computation of the time difference and you happened to by flying over Hawaii in a helicopter...it might show you in the wrong place by 300' and plot the photo on the map in the wrong location by that much.

My computer and GPS time are synced via NTP, its not that hard to keep my camera within a few seconds of those. Even if camera time was off substantially, all the software I have tried has some facility for adjusting/syncing the time. Aside of covering DST I don't think I've ever had any major issues. I know of someone who wrote a script to check the time from exif and his track file via some perl wizardry and set the differential automagically, I'm sure you could do the same with any other language of choice given that you know the current time, and have a reference image to sync between the GPS and the camera images (and of course can read the exif data).

Then again, my inner geek is showing... I find things like that fun (and am thinking out how to script that as we speak...)