4 ms·

I never understood why almost no modern compact camera has built-in geotagging capability. In my opinion it's a very useful feature, but what I usually find in

I never understood why almost no modern compact camera has built-in geotagging capability. In my opinion it's a very useful feature, but what I usually find in modern cameras is only the possibility to connect via Bluetooth to a smartphone, where I need to install an app to provide the coordinates to the camera for geotagging. Then I see cheap low-end smartphones that have built-in support for GPS+Galileo+GLONASS+Beidou and I wonder how much would it cost to insert such electronics into a camera.

jeffbee 4y ago
GNSS receivers suck a massive amount of power, and nobody wants their camera to need charging daily. You accept this on your phone because you were going to charge it every day anyway. Personally, I think it makes a lot more sense for everything to access location information from my phone instead of every device having an expensive, power-gobbling radio.
jws 4y ago
There is a timing problem with geotagging. If I am going to turn on my camera, snap a photo, and expect a geotag, then the GPS had to be already running. It takes a while, seconds to minutes, to get a location from power off. That leaves a few compromised choices… - leave the gps on all the time. This gets you a geotag but you have to charge your camera every day, like your phone. - update the geotag when turned on, but use the previous location for any shots until there is a lock. This is ok for rough location but users aren’t going to like that the first picture of a trip has the wrong location if they don’t warm up the camera first. - stay on after a picture is taken long enough to get a lock then rewrite the picture with the location. This works, unless you take the card out and hand it to someone before the rewrite. Nabbing the location from the cell phone gets you a live location for free.

4 ms·

I never understood why almost no modern compact camera has built-in geotagging capability. In my opinion it's a very useful feature, but what I usually find in

by N19PEDL2 4y ago

jeffbee 4y ago
GNSS receivers suck a massive amount of power, and nobody wants their camera to need charging daily. You accept this on your phone because you were going to charge it every day anyway. Personally, I think it makes a lot more sense for everything to access location information from my phone instead of every device having an expensive, power-gobbling radio.
jws 4y ago
There is a timing problem with geotagging. If I am going to turn on my camera, snap a photo, and expect a geotag, then the GPS had to be already running. It takes a while, seconds to minutes, to get a location from power off. That leaves a few compromised choices… - leave the gps on all the time. This gets you a geotag but you have to charge your camera every day, like your phone. - update the geotag when turned on, but use the previous location for any shots until there is a lock. This is ok for rough location but users aren’t going to like that the first picture of a trip has the wrong location if they don’t warm up the camera first. - stay on after a picture is taken long enough to get a lock then rewrite the picture with the location. This works, unless you take the card out and hand it to someone before the rewrite. Nabbing the location from the cell phone gets you a live location for free.