Cameras with Geotag for aspiring Luddite?

Howdy all! I must confess I’m a bit of an aspiring Luddite. I wish like anything that I didn’t have to carry my phone on me all the time. I think that, for my own interests, a lot of things could be covered by a portable CD Player and a notebook. I know I would need some sort of communicator for emergencies (I’m looking to get a Garmin InReach once I’ve saved up enough), but the other thing I’d really miss is the convenience of my iPhone camera. It’s relatively good quality, sure, but the metadata is (generally) great about the date and time, and more importantly for naturalist purposes, the GeoTag.

I realize that, if I had a locator like a garmin device, I could theoretically write down my location every time I took a photo on a standard digital camera & just manually match it up later. But that’s also really cumbersome if I want to take a lot of photos of a lot of things.

I understand that what I’m looking for might not even exist, but if it does, I imagine y’all would be the ones to know about it. Is there a camera I could get (ideally beginner friendly and compact, like a pocket camera) that has reliable time & date metadata and, more pressingly, a solid GeoTag? I would also love if it could also record video, even if it was only short videos.

I would especially love it if it could work when in remote areas. For instance, I spent about a month and a half in the jungle in 2024, during which time I rarely had any service or wifi & was usually on airplane mode, but most of the photos I took on my phone still had working geotags, so I could upload them to iNat later easily.

I’ve never owned a camera, but if I could get one that would have all these features, I’d be so happy!

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if your Garmin device (or phone or fitness tracker or other device) can record a track, you can use that track to geotag a batch of photos taken during the period the track was recorded, as long as the clocks in your device and your camera are synced (or have a known offset).

because this is possible, i think GPS recording in the camera itself should be one of the last things you worry about when looking for a camera.

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There are a ton of cameras like you’re describing, the only real limitation is your pocket book. Pretty much everything from GoPros to things like the Olympus Tough TG-7 does what you’re looking for.

A big issue with running GPS on a camera though, is that the GPS eats up battery life very quickly, so if you’re in a truly remote area you want as few battery hungry electronic devices as possible as you may not be able to charge them. When I was working in the Amazon I used a purely manual camera film that only used the battery for the light meter because I never had to worry about changing or charging a battery.

At present I use fully digital mirrorless and DSLR cameras for my work in the jungle in SE Asia, and I have to carry a lot of extra batteries if I’m out for more than a few days. Larger DSLR cameras have batteries that last longer, but mirrorless cameras the batteries don’t last all that long.

Point and shoot digital cameras have smaller batteries, and as a result smaller capacity. To get the batteries to last as long as possible the way to do it is to turn off as many digital options as possible, no GPS, turn off touchscreen interface, get one with an optical viewfinder and turn off the rear screen, etc.

A good way to save battery and still have GPS is to leave the GPS off and every now and then take a reference photo with the GPS on. You can use these images and a map to manually locate the rest of the images.

Broadly speaking the more simple point-and-shoot type cameras don’t have the zoom range or low-light capacity either, which can be a big issue if you’re working in places like jungles where it can be surprisingly dark under the canopy.

All that said, as long as you understand the limitations and capacities of the system you’re working with you can still get excellent photos. Olympus Tough series is probably about the best option for you as it’s durable, waterproof, has GPS, decent optics, many of them have a very good macro setting, and some of them take RAW images as well, so if you have the time and inclination you can save in that setting instead of JPEG and edit them later to get better images. Or you can just leave them set to take PEG.

These are a bit expensive, but, as the saying goes, “You get what you pay for,” and you can explore the older models as well as they’re nearly as capable as the current model and cost less.

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I second Olympus Tough with spare batteries & a big memory card.

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Olympus Tg6 has been great for me, I’ve been using it in the field for a few years now. I’d recommend getting spare batteries and the flash diffuser attachment for macro shots. On photo walks with friends it often outperforms more expensive setups just by being easier to handle and get closer to subjects. It can be focussed manually which is not a feature many point and shoot cameras have. The TG7 is basically the same.

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I have a camera that in theory can be linked with the smartphone as a GPS device to automatically geotag pictures, but it’s a function that just doesn’t work properly for me at all (and apparently I’m not the only one with that problem).

What I’m now doing instead is that I’m tracking my hikes with my smartwatch or a hiking app on the phone (which I’m doing anyways), then I export the track file (in my case as a .gpx file) and automatically synch it up with my pictures afterwards.

Now, note that this may not work for everyone because I am using software for it that isn’t officially functional anymore for newer PCs, but it’s freeware/donationware so there’s nothing lost if you download it and can’t get it to run. All you need to do is load your pictures into the software, then load your saved track file and apply it to all the pictures, then save them. You can do a whole batch at once. The software also has an option to automatically save your original pictures as an unchanged backup when you do that.

The software is Geosetter: https://geosetter.de/en/main-en/

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I work in some pretty remote areas, anything up to 300km from the nearest cellphone signal. Any GPS device should work anywhere so long as you have a clear view of the sky.

My solution is to carry two cameras - a GPS enabled compact and a better quality device. I commonly carry a ~15yo Sony Coolpix with GPS function. I picked it up fo $20 at lawn sale 10 years ago. It’s about as simple to use as a digital camera can get. You can pick up newer models at second hand/pawn shops for <$50 today, but they’re not common. You can commonly pick up second-hand phones with GPS cameras for around the same price, which would be the easier option. You can even buy a GPS enabled phone brand new for less than $100. You don’t need a SIM card for the GPS to work, so just treat it as a camera unit

To overcome the problems earthknight raises, I keep the GPS camera device turned off until needed. When I find something worth photographing, I turn it on, wait for GPS lock and take a single photo, then turn it off. That saves battery. I then take my photos using my main camera, which doesn’t have a built-in GPS draining the battery.

Assuming you are uploading to iNaturalist from a laptop/desktop, you can dump the images from both devices into the same location and sort by time taken. If you use the GPS enabled photo as the basis for the observation, you can then add the images from the main camera, and all will get the same coordinates and timestamp. If the photo taken with the GPS device is poor quality (mine usually area) I will then delete that image and only keep the quality stuff.

Not sure if that would work for you, but it does have the advantage that you can choose your main camera on the basis of the features that you want - ease of use, video ability, zoom etc. - rather than being constrained to units with a built in GPS. It also means that the battery drain issue is largely eliminated. The GPS enabled device, whether a camera or cheap phone, can be point-and-shoot because all it needs to do is produce a recognisable, georeferenced image that can be tied back to the images/videos from the main device. Image quality is irrelevant for the GPS device.

Caveat- I mostly photograph plants. If i have to wait for a minute or so for a device to power up and get a GPS lock, it doesn’t worry me. I can spend that time taking photos with the main camera. This may not work for animals, which are not as considerate about staying in one place.

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As someone who uses HoudahGeo to match GPX files recorded on my phone to photos taken on my moderately fancy camera…

It works for me, but it’s fiddly. You’re justified in not wanting to do that, and instead have a single device that does everything you want, and nothing you don’t want.

I agree with the other recommendations here for the Olympus TG-7 (and its recent predecessors, the TG-6 and TG-5). There aren’t many compact cameras to choose from now, and the TG series stand out. They’re also waterproof enough to take snorkelling. Maybe you don’t plan to do that, but it’s one less thing to worry about if you’re on a nice walk and it starts raining.

But as others have said, every camera with built-in GPS is also a battery hog. If you go for 3 hour walks and take maybe 200 pictures between recharges, no problem. If you go for 8 hour walks and take 500 pictures, you’ll need to be careful with usage, or carry spare batteries.

Most GPS cameras, including the TG-7, have two modes for running the GPS:

  1. Enable the “log” switch on top and it runs the GPS continuously. This means all your pictures are geotagged, but it uses the battery even when the camera is otherwise switched off. I recommend this mode if your walks are short enough for it, it’s one less thing to think about.
  2. With logging off, only when you switch the camera on does it enable the GPS and start seeking. If you take a picture and switch it off again without giving it time to locate itself, your picture won’t be geotagged… which is a shame if you got a fleeting glimpse of some neat organism. (If this does happen to you, wait until the satellite symbol on the screen lights up, then take another picture. You can use it to locate the first photograph even if the organism has fled.)

How about the picture quality?

Here are photos I took on a borrowed Olympus TG-5 because I was kayaking and didn’t want to risk splashing my good camera.

Here are photos I took on my compact system camera with a chunky lens on the front. I hope you’ll agree it shows a bit more detail, but is it 4 times better? Because that’s the difference in price, apart from this camera being heavier, having a cumbersome lens on the front, and doesn’t have the GPS so relied on my phone for geotagging.

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I use a Tough series Olympus for virtually all of my iNat photos. I usually make observations fairly constantly, so I turn on the camera at the beginning of a hike and leave it on. I don’t turn the log switch on, however, and I carry lots of extra batteries (I think I have 6 or 8 now).

The TG cameras won’t work well for birds or other distant subjects, but as a naturalist uninterested in learning to be a “good” photographer, it’s been perfect for me.

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Here’s a tutorial on how geotagging from a GPX track can work. As others have mentioned there are several programs that allow you to do it. I personally use HoudahGeo on my Mac although it’s always asking me to allow it to track my use across other apps, which is not cool.

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Every single one of you is a hero, and I cannot thank you enough for this input.

It’s going to take me a while to save up for it, being a college student, but I do think I’m going to pick up a TG-7. I’m perfectly happy to carry extra batteries for walks more than three hours. I’m not invested in becoming a great photographer, but I do want to become a great naturalist, and from what y’all have explained to me, this seems like the best option for me.

I’m also really interested in the softwares y’all have mentioned for comparing locations and GPS across devices and recordings. I might check those out sooner than later. But I do confess that I’m not super into the fiddly nature of it.

If I can get any updates together (either with a camera, software, or both) in the next two months, I’ll post them here! And if the post closes before I can, I’ll make a new mini post about it. I cannot thank you all enough for the advice!!

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I will make a recommendation to get a used tg-5 or tg-6 instead of a 7
They are significantly cheaper and have the same functionality and slightly better according to some, so I reccomend you look up the stats and compare them and see if the 7 is actually the right choice for you.

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TG7 is a software update on TG6, accessories are interchangeable.
If you turn on GPS logging, that’s what chews up memory. If you turn off logging, you still get the photos tagged. Please note GPS does not always work on hilly terrain. I would recommend taking orientation shots when higher up or in a clearing.
I would also recommend getting a light diffuser ring for the TG7, it tends to cast a shadow getting close to a subject.

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