ATP GPS Photo Finder (Geo Tagger)

Wednesday, May 28 2008 @ 06:10 AM PDT

Every now and then a gadget comes a long that grabs my attention. This week I came across an article about the ATP GPS Photo Finder. This small device, used in conjunction with a digital camera, allows you to stamp the images with the latitude and longitude where picture was taken. I was immediately intrigued. I have always resorted to manually plotting the coordinates on such image hosting sites like Flickr, a tedious and time-consuming task when you're dealing with a large amoung of images. More after the bump.

Firstly, I was curious about just how this unit worked, as it does not directly interface with the digital camera. I did some digging around on the ATP homepage and found that it basically works like this:

• You synchronize the times on your digital camera and the ATP GPS Photo Finder as accurately as possible
• You turn on the ATP GPS Photo Finder
• You go and do your picture taking
• You insert your memory card into the ATP GPS Photo Finder
• It adds the geographic coordinates to the EXIF header of the JPEG images

Its a very novel concept, and it works with virtually any digital camera. The ATP GPS Photo Finder has a built-in SD, Memory Stick and MMC memory card reader. Unfortunately, it does not directly read CompactFlash cards. However, it appears that it does support any USB CompactFlash card readers, so you apparently attach them to the unit directly. The omission of a CF slot seems like a grevious omission to me, however, it probably boiled down to form factor as the primary limitation. (The dimensions as quoted at B&H is 3.25 x 1.75 x 1.00").

Apparently it also has the ability to pre-generate Google Earth KML (Keyhole MarkUp) location fles, for those people who use Google Earth/Google Maps or Panoramio.

Though I haven't actually had the opportunity to use one myself, doing further research into the functionality of the device led me to a major roadblock: the unit does not support RAW image files. However, its not out of the realm of possibility that future revisions will, at this time, it does not. This is a major show-stopper for me, as I shoot almost entirely in RAW (Canon CR2, to be exact). For the average consumer, however, shooting JPEG is pretty much standard, so this shouldn't be a problem.

I like how simply the device works as a concept. Tracking your movement and plotting it internally with a timestamp, and then going in and associating the timestamp of the photo with the geographic coordinates the ATP GPS Photo Finder recorded at that time. Simple! Almost an "f*ing duh" sort of concept. I like it, and await future revisions of the unit, if not from ATP, from anyone who is willing to take that extra step and support more advanced users, with RAW and CompactFlash support.

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DSLR Tips & Tricks
http://photos.bahneman.com/tricks/article.php/atp_gps_photo_finder