I’ve spent the last couple of days identifying plants for observers in the places I am familiar with. Now I’m ready to add some of my own photos. I’m going to need to manually add the coordinates. When I’m out in nature, I intentionally keep my phone off and I don’t use the GPS feature on my DSLR.
The locations are all smallish conservation areas within two U.S. counties. Is it OK if I use the coordinates for the parking area/trail head?
More exact coordinates are better of course, but there is no limitation on how accurate you need to be. However, it is important to ensure your location accuracy circle includes the actual location.
In future using the GPS feature on your DSLR makes things so much easier. No editing and checking your circle of accuracy.
We recently have the option to make satellite view on our maps ‘sticky’. I can retrace my path along the trail and mark That plant just there where I saw it. (Altho my pin has expanded a little since I parked it?)
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/28134241
PS we often don’t have GPS coverage when hiking so none of the hi tech options are useful.
Thank you.
Thank you. Although all my walks are in a metro area with lots of towers, GPS is often not possible in the small draws between rocky hills that paths lead me through. Although it is widely done, I don’t want to be going off paths up a hill, trampling plants as I go, just to get reception.
The camera GPS may take a very long time to get a reception. It is the best to activate the GPS and leave it on frequent updates (once a second or fastest). If you switch it on minutes before the picture is taken you may never get reception in the satellite shadows. I have an external Canon GPS that fits onto the DSLR and it often takes a very long time to get a GPS. It has its own battery so it will not unnecessarily drain the SLR battery. If that is still a problem get a GPS with a high sensitivity antenna.
Before I got a GPS tracker, I had terrible trouble trying to remember the locations of observations. A simple work-around I came up with was to regularly take photos of familiar landmarks throughout my walks. I would then use the timestamps of these photos to work out roughly where I was when I made an observation.
Interesting. I didn’t know this. I prefer not to have my every footstep recorded for the nearby trails I use frequently, but using GPS when I am in an unfamiliar area and there are lots of unmarked trails crisscrossing each other – that would be handy. My DSLR does have a GPS but I’ve never activated it and don’t know how much of a battery drain it would be. I do often use fill flash for small plants in pine forests, which sucks the batteries down pretty fast.
If I’m using a trailhead as a location, should I use “obscure” instead of “open” to indicate the plant is not at the exact coordinates?
If you only have the GPS point for the trailhead, you can manually move the pinpoint to a more accurate location, or drag the accuracy circle to encompass a large enough area that ensures the true location is in that circle.
No need to use the obscure feature at all, you can just leave it open.
Ah, I didn’t know that the accuracy circle could be enlarged. So much to learn. Thanks.
We have tutorial videos for how to use the web uploader (and mobile uploader) and how to geotag photos here: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/video+tutorials
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