New Toys for my Photography

I’m trying to simplify one aspect of digital photography. When you upload photos to Flickr, it’s actually quite a process for me. I have to....

examine each photo to see if it passes my standards
if it passes, convert the RAW image (what the camera captures) into a JPEG file for Flickr
place it into a Flickr album (usually a new album)
label each photo and add appropriate tagging
set the viewing permissions
place where they are on the map (geotagging)
add them to a collection

It’s that part in bold red that I’m concentrating on. When I take photos, I kind of have an idea where I took them. I can come up with a pretty good guess on where to put them on the map. Of course, this is only a guess and is not accurate in terms of the real location of that photo.

For example, when we were in Olympic National Park, we took many hikes to view different things. Along the way, I would take a photo of a flower or some other subject. When I finally uploaded the photos to Flickr, I would never know where each photo was taken. All I knew was that the photo was taken on a certain hike. The result was that a group of photos for that hike would be lumped together on the map, usually at the ending destination. And even then, since trails are not marked on a map of the park in Flickr, it was a very rough guess on where they were placed. It would look like this.

In reality, there were photos all over the place. So, what to do about this? Well, this weekend, we bought a GPS unit that should help in this endeavor. It’s a bit complicated, but I’ll simplify it a bit.

When you place images on the map in Flickr, all you are really doing it changing the photo information to record the longitude and latitude of the photo. The GPS unit can much more accurately record that information than I can. The trick is to get it to talk to the camera. As the photo is being taken, the GPS unit will update the photo information with the coordinates. This information will be included with the photo when it is downloaded and converted to a JPEG file in preparation for uploading to Flickr. With the location data loaded, the photo should show up on the map at more or less (within a meter or two) where that photo was taken.

The end result will show a scattering of photos along the trail, instead of all grouped together. In theory, if someone wanted to get back to that exact subject that I took, they could. This is what is required.

The DVD lesson guide was unbelievable. I learned so much from it. If you have a Nikon and are trying to learn all the things your camera can do, I highly recommend getting your hands on a Magic Lantern video. It’s well worth the money.

At the top right, you will see the MC-35 GPS Cord. This connects to the Nikon camera and provides a nine pin serial connector. This provides a connection for the “PC interface cable” on the lower right. That cable connects to the GPS unit. Once the connection is established, my camera should acknowledge that a GPS unit is connected. The “GPS” display will blink briefly, then go solid in the camera view finder. This means that any photo taken will have the GPS coordinates recorded. And then of course, we need the GPS unit itself (bottom left).

After a lot of research, we found that the Garmin units were the best, and the one with the best reception for isolated areas was the 60CSx, with it’s large and powerful antenna.

Oh, and the other cable (shutter release cable) was a throw-in cable for me. It connects to the camera (or the port on the MC-35 GPS cable) and will release the shutter without touching the camera, which is absolutely necessary when taking macro photography, or for photos taken in low light conditions where a long shutter speed is necessary.

So that’s it. I haven’t actually done this yet. We have the GPS unit. What is on order are all the cables to make this happen. Will it all work? It should. People are doing it, using these cables.

I can’t wait for them to get here!