Geotagging Photos

I use a Nikon DSLR and Garmin Dakota 20. Then I use Nikon’s ViewNX-i software to do the same as Lightroom does in the video.

I almost always use my Google Pixel 2XL stock phone cam, which automatically records the GPS coordinates and works seamlessly with Google Maps and Google Photos. In the stock camera settings one must toggle on “Save locations.” In my Google Photos app settings I toggle on “Remove geo location (from photos & videos that you share by link, but not by other means).” When I’m out in the field I simply take photos with my phone cam. Later, when I want to create a single iNat observation I open Google Photos, press and drag across the pix I want to upload to my observation, click on the share icon, then click on the iNaturalist icon. The pix and the location info is uploaded and the iNat observation opens up in the iNat app. I don’t select automatic upload in the iNat app. so I can first work on preparing all the observations, and then when I’m ready to post the observations and make them public I can either click on “upload,” or I can simply press, hold, and drag down on the screen to initiate the upload process. Recently I reinstalled my iNat app (as I do somewhat regularly whenever it gets buggy and I can’t fix it any other way), and I forgot to re-do my settings. I noticed the GPS coordinates were not automatically uploading to the iNat app. I was able to open Google Photos, open one photo that was used in the observation, click on the 3 dots in the upper right of the pic to open up a menu, click on “i” (info), see the little map with the location pin, click on that map to open it in Google Maps, and then copy & paste the GPS coordinates from Google Maps into the “Location notes” in the iNat app, and thus, manually add them that way after-the-fact. That was a bit of a pain, but not as time consuming as it took you to read that process, especially after I did it a few times. Better to have all your settings correct before you make your observations so that’s all automated!

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I just want to warn people: some phones will accidentally post the wrong location if directly using the iNat app, especially if phone is looking for wifi. I have found the GPS half a mile off, marked at one of the nearby homes one to many times. Many thanks to @alex_abair for noticing this issue.

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There are two advantages to google maps (or presumably any other mapping app) - one is that you can see your location on a map, and therefore know when it has found a good fix. The other is that, if I’m not wrong, google maps continues to hold an accurate location when in the background, while iNaturalist does not seem to. That might be something to do with my location settings though.

Maybe it does for you. For me, on Android 9, in Google Maps version 10.11.1, it only continually fetches coordinates in the background if it’s providing me with directions.

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I started geotagging my pictures long before iNaturalist.

Currently I’m using my Garmin Fenix 3 watch for tracking. I use it as a fitness tracker and I’m also able to export the .gpx tracks if I want to geotag my photos.
It’s really easy with Geosetter for Windows. I download the .gpx tracks into the same folder as the pictures. That way I just open the folder in Geosetter, tick the .gpx track, select all pictures and press CTRL+G to automatically geotag all pictures.
It’s a really simple process!
You need to be careful if you’re travelling and pass different timezones.

In the past I’ve used a dedicated cheap GPS logger (i-Blue 747A+) to track my travels and geotag my pictures. The battery lasted much longer than my Fenix watch, but I can easily get through a day with it when I reduce the GPS logging rate.

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I’m currently logging with the free GPXLogger app on an android phone, which seems to be very accurate and doesn’t jump around the way the default location services do. I then sync the tracklogs with the photos in lightroom, which is just a couple clicks.

I also just discovered that the nice old Garmin Etrex vista H I have that I had stopped using since Garmin’s windows 10 software has stopped supporting it (I can’t believe they would do that for dozens of models that are still out there in the world working perfectly) will cooperate with the free software EasyGPS to download GPX files to do the same tagging process, so I’ll probably go back to using that instead of my phone for long days. If anyone has an old GPS sitting around that isn’t officially supported on their current OS, EasyGPS can probably make it usable again.

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I have been using the DSLR / GPS combination for several years as a way of mapping rare plants. By having my full track I can buffer it to make a survey polygon and then I buffer the appropriate photo locations to make an “occupied” polygon. This allows me to map multiple species in a single survey even when they partially overlap.

I have several small gps loggers but my favorite is the Holux M-241. It has a display that shows the time to seconds so I can sync my photo times very accurately by taking a photo of the clock. I’ve been keeping track and my Pentax K-x clock drifts about 30 seconds per month while the K-70 clock drifts by about 10 seconds per month. The Holux will also run for about 36 hours on a single rechargeable AA battery, my phone can’t even come close in remote areas where it’s struggling to find a signal.

I use Picmeta Photo Tracker to geotag after I’ve adjusted the photo times in Picasa. Picasa has a nice feature that lets you adjust the time of a group of photos by setting the actual time of the first photo and it calculates the difference and applies it to the rest. If the first photo is the picture of the clock on my gps it’s very easy to get it right.

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Can anyone suggest a good GPS tracker for Android to do this. I tried to install one on the weekend, it worked only when I went to export the track got 2 things I did not appreciate (can’t export unless you agree to a monthly subscription and must link to Facebook).

Basically looking for

  • as mentioned Android
  • does not require a Facebook account, I don’t have one and am not creating one
  • prefer a 1 time purchase, not a subscription model
  • don’t care about being able to download maps, get recommendations etc, just want the track and be able to export it
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GPS Essentials works well enough for me.

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Is there an instruction video for it ? And does this work on an iphone ? I use iphone and add other (better fotos) via the website if i can get better photos. Nowadays i do not use the android iNaturalist app.

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From what you’re asking you might like GPXLogger. It’s dead simple- an interface that shows your gps location info (no map) and a couple buttons. You hit “record” to start the track, and when you’re done you hit “stop”. The app then saves the tracklog to a folder on your phone in the common .gpx format with the date in the filename, where you can do what you want with it (I plug my phone into my computer and download to import to lightroom).

Free, dead simple, accurate, easy on the battery.

I have a crappy Android LG K20 phone and it has an equally crappy camera so I use a cheap point and shoot with analog zoom but no GPS. I use the free GPX Recorder on the phone and free GPicSync on my Windows 7 machine.

Sorry, I believe it’s not possible on an iPhone. I just looked on my friend’s iPhone pretty thoroughly and could not find a way to do it. I know for certain that the Android iNaturalist app definitely has some other useful features (like side-by-side comparison of observation photos with photos of species suggested by the AI) that are not available with IOS, because I do have an iPad and also because I’ve done observations right next to friends with iPhones who can’t to the same things.

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Just to clarify, on my friend’s iPhone I checked both her regular iPhone photo gallery and Google Photos app, and it didn’t seem possible from either app to create an iNaturalist observation by selecting photos and sharing it to the iNaturalist app. When I clicked on the share icon the iNat app was not an option.

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Share? App? I do neither. I copy the photos from my camera or from or picassaweb.google.com or photos.google.com to my PC and upload (using the Upload button and drag and drop) them to iNaturalist in the browser. I tell people who are serious about iNaturalist not to use the app. I only use it when I’m out in the field and I’m curious what’s been observed in an area - assuming its not too bright out to read my phone’s screen.

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Hi can this app email the GPX log?
Also who are the creators ‘Ear to Ear Oak’?
I tried some other apps Yesterday but Time Zone is out when loading the file onto a Windows Desktop app, would you know of any other free GPX viewers on Windows PC that can load the GPX data that displays all POI with the data at once?

GPX logger does not have a way to email the file in the app itself- it just records and then saves the file. The file is then in a folder in the internal storage of your phone- you can download it to your computer directly with a USB cable, or email as an attachment from an email app like Gmail. I don’t know anything about the app developers.

I also don’t know much about desktop gpx viewers. My default thought would be to try google earth.

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There seems to be a free app for Windows PC called GPicSync which Geotaged my photos

I Selected GPX file (that I emailed to myself) than selected the Picture folder, than synchronise. After it’s completed it also created a Google Earth kml file which can be opened in the desktop version of Google Earth by clicking the button on the app, it didn’t work the 1st time so I dragged & dropped the KML file onto Google Earth Map


Yesterday when out in the bush reserve my GPS tracker didn’t record local time but this app seems to allow manual selection of my time zone.
Super happy I stumbled upon this thread, it’s going to save me hours! No more manually entering GPS coordinates in iNat. :)

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I’m hoping someone who uses Darktable can help me out here. I successfully found and got a working tracker onto my phone, did the track and successfully exported it.

I’ve also successfully applied the track onto my photos in Darktable, if I go to the Map view function in Darktable as you can see here

I’ve watched a couple of YouTube vids, and read the documentation, yet when I upload the photos after having done this be it to iNat or Flicker etc, I get no associated geographic information loaded.

I’m guessing it may have something to do with the data being in separate files that are created with the process and not getting read, but I see nothing in the sample vids or documentation that suggests there is some additional step or config option I need to enable.

Thanks

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