Using GPS data from a cell phone to geotag pictures from any digital camera

[tic]

Since none of my digital cameras have a GPS receiver, but my cell phone does, I started thinking of a way to get GPS data from the phone into the EXIF information of the individual pictures. I have a Nokia cell phone (N85, but it should work for any "Series 60" phone). I'm sure this could be done for other brands as well, including the iPhone. The key is to get a GPS-track stored as a .GPX-file that you can transfer to you computer to match with the timestamp in the pictures. The date/time in the phone and the camera must be reasonably synchronized (within a minute will probably be fine) to get a good result.

I use the Nokia SportsTracker program to generate a GPS-track of a "walkabout". See http://sportstracker.nokia.com
When the track has been saved it can be exported to a .gpx-file from within the program (on the cell phone). That file is then transferred to a PC.

A program is needed to read the .gpx-file and match time/location with the pictures from you camera. I have used Gpicsync from Google: http://code.google.com/p/gpicsync/
This program also lets you display the pictures and track in Google Earth. I used the Windows version but there are version for OS X/Mac and Linux as well.

Once the program is done, the GPS data is stored in the EXIF info in the individual picture files. If uploaded to Flickr, this can be used to place them on the flickr map.
(You need to do this explicitly for each photo unless you change a setting in flickr, You->Your Account->Privacy->Import EXIF location data.)

More info can be found here: http://blog.galasoft.ch/archive/2009/01/02/geocoding-pictures-automatically-with-nokia-e71-and-gpicsync.aspx

I think this is pretty neat. I couldn't find anything on this in RFF when I did a search so I wrote this up. If any members have suggestions for how to do this with other phones, feel free to follow up...

 

[bmattock]

Very cool. I do not have GPS capability on my cell phone, nor do I have a way to connect my cell phone to my PC. However, I habitually carry a Wintec WBT-201 GPS data logger (very inexpensive tiny little black box) when I go out shooting. I use 'gpsbabel' to transfer the GPX file to my PC, and 'digiKam' matches the time/date with the time/date of my photos and integrates the GPS geo lat and long into my Exif data on the photo. This also is picked up automatically by Flickr when I upload my photos. I have a small Perl script which I use to do formal geotags too, although they are not necessary to place the photo on the Flickr map.

I've also used this GPS data logger to put GPS data into Exif files for film photographs I've taken - I just do the same routine when I scan the resulting negatives, although of course the location is more approximate since I don't have a way to match the time/date precisely.

Fun geeky stuff. Glad to see someone else is into it. I've been doing it for years and talking about it here, no one else seems to have much interest.

 

[BillP]

Long thread about it here: http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/leica-m9-forum/112049-how-link-m9-gps-data.html

Regards,

Bill