7DMkII and GPS Abilities ???

I finally got off of our property with my new-to-me 7DMkII, probably a 200-mile circle, and turned on the GPS feature when we got underway = I still have a bit to get figured out.

I have read and reread the user manual until my eyes have wore holes through it and some points are still somewhat muddy.

1. Must I calibrate the compass every time I enable GPS ? 2. .....after a battery change ?

3. If I enable the Greenwich clock thingie, will that mess around with my Metadata date-taken ? 4. .....will it mess with my date/time on the camera ?

5. The manual warns and warns again that having a short interval between signal readings will drastically affect battery duration; shooting RAW/Large jpeg, just how quick can I expect this thing to use up a battery if I set it for 1-second (the quickest I see in the menu)?


Considering number 5 above, I have just learned from experience that having too large an interval results in the GPS being off by as much as a mile or more when shooting from a moving truck.
Whatever coordinates it yields will be dead on the blacktop of whatever road I have been on, but often a mile or so ahead of the actual point of capture.
I have several shots where it stamped GPS on one road and the picture was taken on a different road after making a turn.
When I noticed the wide discrepancies, I checked and the camera was set for 15-second intervals; that is hogwash, as we would have to have been on a rocket on rails to cover that much ground in 15 seconds; I might believe that the 15-second setting is closer to a minute and a half.

Which leads me to this observation: with a fresh battery, out in open rural territory, that business about achieving a lock on the satellite in from 30-seconds to a minute in reality is more like five minutes.
I was just now outside messing with the thing and it was a good five minutes before the GPS indicator finally quit flashing; I was about to give up and decide that something wasn't working.

In it's favor, I will say this; once it got locked in, sitting in the cab of a fast moving truck, with cell-phone conversations taking place, C.B.radio always on, and one big major cross-country power-line after another due to close proximity to two major hydro-electric dams, through heavy timber, down in deep heavily-wooded hollers where the sun don't never shine, between tall buildings, under multiple stop-lights, it stamped GPS on almost every shot taken --- and dead-on accurate GPS when we were not moving.
Just now, when I finally got it to make connection outside, it held connection through the one-story portion of my metal roofed and metal sided house and only lost connection when I entered the portion where I had an upstairs above me.

Some of the shots that it missed made no sense at all as the images immediately before and after were stamped and often in the same spot within a few feet.

I have just now changed the interval to 1-second; I had rather swap a few batteries than to have inaccuracies in my data.


Thanks for reading and all help is appreciated.

I don't really have an answer for your question, but regarding accuracy ... I have never done any real research but my own observations are it depends on both the device and the software. On my android/Samsung phone different apps lock on quicker than others. Two of my apps lock on pinpoint location real quick while two others plot in general area and you can watch it re-plot and re-plot with increasing accuracy taking longer to pinpoint your location. I don't have any experience with Canon camera GPS.

As far as what you describe I see 3 main options depending on what you're shooting. 1) Landscape etc. typically takes longer to set up therefore the longer times wouldn't matter. 2) location shooting where you're moving but a general plot would work. Example: who cares if it plots in the zoo parking lot if you know the pic was taken at the zoo tiger cage. Close enough if that makes sense. 3) which sounds like you're describing. Constant moving. Then it's possibly best to keep short update times for better accuracy but at the expense of battery life.

JollyRoger523 wrote in post #19078319
who cares if it plots in the zoo parking lot if you know the pic was taken at the zoo tiger cage.

That is pretty much how I handle antique machinery shows and such, where I may take two thousand photos within a two hundred yard radius; I pinpoint dead-center of the grounds and that suffices for the whole lot.
For the last several years, all of my geolocating has been done manually, after-the-fact; for places I frequent, I have created dedicated "geolocation information carriers" - jpegs that have text describing what/where they represent and also geolocation metadata.
digiKam's geolocation plug-in has the ability to copy the information from one file and paste it to many thousands of files; so, I copy the info from my dedicated carrier and paste it to all the images taken at that location.


As for my recent road trip, last night I found a series of several images that all plotted to a road where we had been and some of the images were taken over three miles and two road junctions away.
In it's favor, it did plot the right-hand lane of the road that we had been on prior to taking the images.

I am anxious to see how much more accurate setting the interval at 1-second is going to be.

BuckSkin wrote in post #19078133
I finally got off of our property with my new-to-me 7DMkII, probably a 200-mile circle, and turned on the GPS feature when we got underway = I still have a bit to get figured out.

I have read and reread the user manual until my eyes have wore holes through it and some points are still somewhat muddy.

1. Must I calibrate the compass every time I enable GPS ? 2. .....after a battery change ?

3. If I enable the Greenwich clock thingie, will that mess around with my Metadata date-taken ? 4. .....will it mess with my date/time on the camera ?

5. The manual warns and warns again that having a short interval between signal readings will drastically affect battery duration; shooting RAW/Large jpeg, just how quick can I expect this thing to use up a battery if I set it for 1-second (the quickest I see in the menu)?


Considering number 5 above, I have just learned from experience that having too large an interval results in the GPS being off by as much as a mile or more when shooting from a moving truck.
Whatever coordinates it yields will be dead on the blacktop of whatever road I have been on, but often a mile or so ahead of the actual point of capture.
I have several shots where it stamped GPS on one road and the picture was taken on a different road after making a turn.
When I noticed the wide discrepancies, I checked and the camera was set for 15-second intervals; that is hogwash, as we would have to have been on a rocket on rails to cover that much ground in 15 seconds; I might believe that the 15-second setting is closer to a minute and a half.

Which leads me to this observation: with a fresh battery, out in open rural territory, that business about achieving a lock on the satellite in from 30-seconds to a minute in reality is more like five minutes.
I was just now outside messing with the thing and it was a good five minutes before the GPS indicator finally quit flashing; I was about to give up and decide that something wasn't working.

In it's favor, I will say this; once it got locked in, sitting in the cab of a fast moving truck, with cell-phone conversations taking place, C.B.radio always on, and one big major cross-country power-line after another due to close proximity to two major hydro-electric dams, through heavy timber, down in deep heavily-wooded hollers where the sun don't never shine, between tall buildings, under multiple stop-lights, it stamped GPS on almost every shot taken --- and dead-on accurate GPS when we were not moving.
Just now, when I finally got it to make connection outside, it held connection through the one-story portion of my metal roofed and metal sided house and only lost connection when I entered the portion where I had an upstairs above me.

Some of the shots that it missed made no sense at all as the images immediately before and after were stamped and often in the same spot within a few feet.

I have just now changed the interval to 1-second; I had rather swap a few batteries than to have inaccuracies in my data.


Thanks for reading and all help is appreciated.

How accurate do you need it to be?
The GPS on the 7D2 isn't the best, although it seems that they've improved it quietly with some firmware updates they haven't advertised. It uses a lot of battery, even when the camera is otherwise "off". I personally use 10 seconds, and that is sufficient resolution for me, even on a jet. I find that resolution in a light plane where I may be as much as about 1000 feet between data points.

GPS signals do bounce around, and I've seen some odd things, even with dedicated hand-held GPS units. I've seen a dedicated hand-held GPS be off by a couple of kilometers because the signal bounced around inside of the vehicle. As for calibrating the compass, go into the info screen while the GPS is enabled, see which direction is claims, and then turn around. If you get bogus results, do the calibration.

I try to use the GPS periodically, even if just inside, to update the "almanac", the database of satellite positions. I don't know if the 7D2 actually stores this information, but may GPS systems do, to get a calculated position faster.
https://en.wikipedia.o​rg/wiki/GPS_signals#Al​manac

I use the GPS to set the camera clock, but I tell the camera my time zone, too. You'll have to update it for daylight savings time, but you would have to do so without the GPS, too.

BuckSkin wrote in post #19078133
Considering number 5 above, I have just learned from experience that having too large an interval results in the GPS being off by as much as a mile or more when shooting from a moving truck.
Whatever coordinates it yields will be dead on the blacktop of whatever road I have been on, but often a mile or so ahead of the actual point of capture.
I have several shots where it stamped GPS on one road and the picture was taken on a different road after making a turn.
When I noticed the wide discrepancies, I checked and the camera was set for 15-second intervals; that is hogwash, as we would have to have been on a rocket on rails to cover that much ground in 15 seconds; I might believe that the 15-second setting is closer to a minute and a half.

Which leads me to this observation: with a fresh battery, out in open rural territory, that business about achieving a lock on the satellite in from 30-seconds to a minute in reality is more like five minutes.
I was just now outside messing with the thing and it was a good five minutes before the GPS indicator finally quit flashing; I was about to give up and decide that something wasn't working.

In the general case it can take five minutes to get a 3D position fix if the camera has been off for a long time (hours to days). As another poster mentioned we don't know if the camera stores any almanac information. Even hand-held GPSRs that store almanacs can take five minutes to get a 3D fix because the almanac information becomes stale with time.

I'd suggest setting a one second fix interval in a clear area (horizon to horizon, 360 degs) when you power-up the camera and leave it there until it gets a lock. The more satellites it can see, the faster it will get a 3D fix. It take three satellites to get a 2D fix (Google "triangulation") and four to get a 3D fix. If there's something blocking the GPSRs' 360 deg, horizon-to-horizon view of the sky, it will not see as many satellites as it could and accuracy will degrade. How much depends on how many satellites it loses.

My own experience is when GPSRs are moving it takes longer to get a 3D fix.

If you're near any military bases or equipment, all bets are off.

BuckSkin, I've had my 7D2 since release. The fact it has a GPS was one of the factors that enticed me to buy it and not a camera from the competition. I have found that the GPS looses the signal too often to be reliable. I now view it as a cheap marketing gimmick which in my case worked. Hope Capn Jack is right about the unannounced improvements to the GPS. The last time mine was on was 2018 and it seemed to work pretty good under the big western sky. I usually use a hand held unit for location data, which is catalogued separately.

If this is important to you then pay close attention to it.

Rod

RodS57 wrote in post #19078552
BuckSkin, I've had my 7D2 since release. The fact it has a GPS was one of the factors that enticed me to buy it and not a camera from the competition. I have found that the GPS looses the signal too often to be reliable. I now view it as a cheap marketing gimmick which in my case worked. Hope Capn Jack is right about the unannounced improvements to the GPS. The last time mine was on was 2018 and it seemed to work pretty good under the big western sky. I usually use a hand held unit for location data, which is catalogued separately.

If this is important to you then pay close attention to it.

Rod

I only make the claim about the GPS because I got the camera shortly after it was launched, and the GPS was nearly useless. I've installed updates as they's come out, and the GPS has improved to usable, enough that it may give usable positions through a commercial flight. I also use a separate GPS as a back-up (Bad-elf, since it is small and works with other software).

Capn Jack wrote in post #19078463
How accurate do you need it to be?

Thanks for your helpful input.

It ain't so much as I need it to be as it is I want it to be accurate; often to my expense of much time and effort, I am somewhat obsessive about such things.

RodS57 wrote in post #19078552
The fact it has a GPS was one of the factors that enticed me to buy it
Rod

Same here; the super-fast capture speed and GPS ability were the governing factors in my seeking one out.

Mine has thus far proven to be dead-on for any shots I have taken while not in a vehicle; and, like I already have said, the vehicle shots may have quite a bit of distance lag, but wherever they pinpoint is always somewhere I had recently been - right on the blacktop.

I have been considering a dedicated GPS device, but know so little about them that I may waste my money on something that is not what I need.

dangermoney wrote in post #19078531
The more satellites it can see, the faster it will get a 3D fix. It take three satellites to get a 2D fix (Google "triangulation") and four to get a 3D fix.

Thanks for that; I am quite familiar with the concept of triangulation, but it had not registered in my mind that GPS devices needed triangulation.
I was thinking that a single satellite did it all; but, now that you have enlightened me, I can see where it would need three.

As for being inside vehicles and such, I bought the wife a Wilson cell-phone signal booster gizmo that resides in her vehicle or in the house; there is an external antenna on her vehicle and also one mounted outside the house.
In the house, her phone went from no bars to five strong bars; and, in the vehicle, she can drive through those notorious no-signal areas that are so prevalent around here and never lose signal.
I wonder if a similar device exists for boosting GPS signals.

The GPS system actually requires four satellites, since there are four unknown variables in the equation system it's solving.

For a new GPS device, which hasn't been used for a while, it takes about 12 minutes to download the entire almanac from the sky. Once that's done, ephimeris data can be downloaded in 30 seconds, and after that, it's ready to go operational.
But all these times require constant unobstructed view of the sky. Something you don't have in a car, for example.

When downloading ephemeris data, it's sent in three blocks. Each block lasts six seconds. Transmission starts every tenth second. So from 00 to 06, you must have constant view of the sky to get block A. From 10 to 16 to get block B. If your signal is blocked during 13-14, block B is not complete, but will attempt to download during 40-46 instead.

GPS apps in phones, or in GPS devices connected to phones, typically download this data from the internet, so they get ready much faster. Some GPS devices use a method of predicting ephemeris data from the almanac, and can thus be in operation in a few seconds. The downsides are that they must have been used within a few days before, and the initial position may be a bit off. It will be updated within a minute.

The most common GPS signal improvement gadget is an external antenna. But that requires a receiver with an antenna jack, something your camera doesn't have.
Canon's cameras also have a feature where you can configure how long the last known position should be valid. If you enter a building, for example, where GPS can't get in, you can set the camera that for up to one hour, the last known position, outside the door, will be used. If you haven't left the building by then, the position will start record as unknown in your images. If you have left the building, then the position will be updated when possible.

apersson850 wrote in post #19079014
Canon's cameras also have a feature where you can configure how long the last known position should be valid. If you enter a building, for example, where GPS can't get in, you can set the camera that for up to one hour, the last known position, outside the door, will be used. If you haven't left the building by then, the position will start record as unknown in your images. If you have left the building, then the position will be updated when possible.

Thanks !

Does this feature exist on my 7DMkII ?
I have just now investigated the menu and I am not seeing it.

BuckSkin wrote in post #19078577
Thanks for your helpful input.

It ain't so much as I need it to be as it is I want it to be accurate; often to my expense of much time and effort, I am somewhat obsessive about such things.

You are most welcome!

One other thing that may help, is to place the camera on the passenger seat next to you (assuming you aren't doing so already). This gives it a wide front window, and a side window to get a clear view of the sky. However, a front window defroster might interfere with the GPS signal. I've heard this is a problem on some jets (cockpit windows), and some cars have similar heated windows.

The 787 uses electronics to "dim" the windows, and the flight crew will often dim all the windows. When the windows are dark, the plane is essentially a Faraday cage, at least for GPS signals.

Capn Jack wrote in post #19079105
One other thing that may help, is to place the camera on the passenger seat next to you (assuming you aren't doing so already). This gives it a wide front window, and a side window to get a clear view of the sky. However, a front window defroster might interfere with the GPS signal. I've heard this is a problem on some jets (cockpit windows), and some cars have similar heated windows.

The 787 uses electronics to "dim" the windows, and the flight crew will often dim all the windows. When the windows are dark, the plane is essentially a Faraday cage, at least for GPS signals.

Thanks for the info.

Capn Jack wrote in post #19078559
I also use a separate GPS as a back-up (Bad-elf, since it is small and works with other software).

Which Bad-elf do you have/recommend ?

I looked on Amazon and there seem to be several.

Whether it is relevant or not, I do not have, nor intend to ever have, a "smart" phone - I thought I would throw that out there in case a smart phone is necessary for some of these devices.

BuckSkin wrote in post #19079090
Does this feature exist on my 7DMkII ?

I don't know, I don't have any. But it's in my 1DX Mark II, at least.