I don’t think this is a technical issue. Maybe? If so, on the part of the camera?
My camera can have the GPS on or off. If I’m photographing any animal that someone might want to harm or eat (which is also harming, but distinguishing between ‘kill for fun/loathing’ and ‘kill for sustenance’). I realise one can obscure the location, or keep it private, but I like to input what my camera reads.
But when I do, often iNatch doesn’t like how I input it. For example, for my most recent obs., camera say N60 36.716’ ,W134 56.199’.
From my marker placement (close but approximate) iNatch has found 60.611493123, -134.9367265057.
Trying to input what the cameras says, the submit button is greyed-out, and I cannot apply it.
(Also, does iNatch have the option for UK English? I don’t like my spellings being red-underlined.)
That’s only a difference of about 25 meters north and 5 meters or less west. Taking your uncertainty values into account that’s well within the margin of error of even a handheld GPS, let alone the far less accurate ones in a camera.
Also, the further north you are the less accurate GPS readings tend to be due to where most of the satellites orbit, and there is the issue of coordinate systems and projections, all of which add differences.
I can’t comment on the greyed out issue, but in terms of the location.
I would not worry at all about the location portion, but the inability to input being greyed out is odd.
Something you might check in the camera is if you can change how the camera records the location. Right now you have it set to degrees and decimal minutes. See if you can set it to decimal degrees or UTM instead. Either of those tend to be less confusing for other computer systems to work with.
It would be helpful if you can share screenshots of what you’re referring to, especially the grayed out issue. Text descriptions are open to interpretation and will never contain all the details that a screenshot would. Knowing which camera you’re using would also be helpful.
You can copy and paste the decimal formatted coordinates.
It’s not clear to me if you’re referring to the forum (which is run on different software, by Discourse.org) or iNat itself. Either way, it’s probably your browser that is adding the red underline, iNat itself doesn’t do it.
If you go to your Account Settings on the website, you change your account’s locale to English (UK), but that’s separate from the red underlines.
My camera is the Pentax K-1, an excellent landscape camera that is however challenged by fast-moving subjects–not that you asked or that that is relevant. What is relevant is that it’s a fairly complex beast but I’ll bet there is a way to change to UTM or to decimal degrees. I’ll go try.
Thanks. Yes, I’ve just tried again to input a location, and it’s not allowed–‘greyed-out.’ It’s not just that my camera puts West when iNaturalist prefers a minus sign for my location.
Sure–thanks for the work-around. I suppose the reason I manually input is I don’t trust Google (or Meta, or Apple, or Microsoft), but for this silverweed’s location, I don’t mind. It’s just a gravel pit. Muddy thinking, perhaps.
I did try EarthKnight’s suggestion of changing the presentation of my GPS, but saw no option in the camera menus. I’ll dig further into the PDF manual later.
Here is a screenshot of my attempt to manually input a location. I did also try the minus sign in lieu of W. You can see the ‘Update Observations’ button is disabled (“greyed out”).
@tiwane, thanks. The Google Maps solution worked wonders. True that to copy the decimal equivalent, you cannot highlight and copy the components separately … so I had to manually type them in there. Not so hard. Plus the elevation now gets input.
As for [quote=“tiwane, post:3, topic:52763”]
If you go to your Account Settings on the website, you change your account’s locale to English (UK), but that’s separate from the red underlines.
[/quote], my locale is northern Canada, not the UK, but I like UK English. It’s a more complex, beautiful way of spelling–analogue, plough, etc.! More subtle.
@earthknight … Thanks. Great info about the decreasing accuracy of polar satellite information. Very true. I’ve sometimes had contributors to iNatch protest that my shot, for example, of a hawk on a power pole did not match the location I’d input. They were right–no powerpole cutline was in the frame, and so I had to fix that.
These collective solutions will increase accuracy.
