Jose Oliver

Sony updated its photo geotagging devices line by introducing the new GPS-CS3K. Similar to other geotagging devices like ATP’s PhotoFinder, it keeps track of your movement and matches the location where you took a photo based on where you were at the time the photo was taken. What makes this device special is that it comes with an SD/MS reader built in, so the photographer just needs to insert the camera’s memory card into the device so the location gets appended to the photo files without the need of a computer.

These devices are cool but often come with some drawbacks such as poor battery life, usability and poor accuracy indoors or dense urban areas. I have not used one yet but from the early reviews it seems that the GPS-CS3KA tackles the battery life and usability issues well. The indoor accuracy issue a big limitation inherent from GPS. If this device would combine GPS with WiFi positioning (like the Eye-Fi Explore card does) in order to increase accuracy indoors, it would definitely set this device apart.

Sony Support (Operating Manuals) – GPS-CS3KA

News/Reviews Sites:

• Akihabara News: Sony's GPS-CS3K, Your Camera's Best Friend!
• Sony GPS-CS3KA - next generation GPS logger finally announced

Flickr has a lot of cool things, such as excellent support for geotagged photos. Unfortunately, Flickr maps still lacks the functionality you can find in Google Maps or Live Maps. Both services have excellent support for things such as adding placemarks, tracks and GPS information to your maps. You can still however combine data between these services.

First, get your Flickr photosets GeoRSS link:

1. Upload your geotagged photos to Flickr and include them in a Set.

2. Open the Photoset page and click on the photoset’s “Feed” link   which is located near at the bottom of the page. In your browser’s address bar, append to the Feed URL the following string:

?&format=rss_200&georss=1

The resulting URL is your photoset’s GeoRSS feed. Copy the entire URL.

To add your Flickr photoset to Google Maps:

1. Log into Google Maps and click on the the “My Maps” link.

2. Click on the link “Create a new map” and click on the “Import” link. Paste your photoset’s GeoRSS feed URL and click the [Upload] button. Your photos should be imported into the Google Map you just created.

3. You can create placemarks or add your GPS trackroutes by editing them in Google Earth, saving them into a KML or KMZ file and importing them to the Map you created in the same fashion you imported the Flickr georss feed.

To add your Flickr photoset to Windows Live Maps:

1. Log into Windows Live Maps and click on the “Collections” dropdown. Click on “Open your Collections” 

2. Click on the “Import” link and paste your photoset’s GeoRSS feed URL into the texbox. Click the [Import] button. Your photos should be imported into the map collection which will be named as your photoset.

3. You can create placemarks or add your GPS trackroutes importing them in same fashion you imported the Flickr georss feed. Similarly, try out VE 3d Tours by clicking on the 3d button and the “Tour in 3d link”.

Conclusion

You can copy links to your maps and tours and paste them in your PhotoSet’s page. An example of the end results can be seen here:

  Kayaking the San Juan Islands   

Astrometry - the branch of astronomy that relates to precise measurements and explanations of the positions and movements of stars and other celestial bodies. (Source: Wikipedia)

I blogged about astrometry can recognize the night sky in a photo more than a year ago, and thought it would be neat if someone made Flickr mashup out of this. That sure did not take long.

Read: Found in Space – A Flickr mashup which recognizes objects in the night sky

Checkout Flickr Astrometry Group

Read: [The Photo Marketplace That Never Launched: Flickr Stock]

CNET Article: iPhoto update helps show merits of geotagging

Apple: iPhoto 09 New Features – Places

Recently I got a new Tamron lens for my camera. First thing I did with the new lens is to take some shots with my other lenses and compare them with similar focal lengths. After downloading the photos to my PC for comparison, it immediately became a challenge to differentiate which photo was taken with which lens.

Reviewing the EXIF metadata using exiftool, an excellent image metadata manipulation utility, I found out that lens information is indeed saved by Canon for those lenses which are known to the camera [Refer to the Canon Lens Type Values].

You can try it out using the following exiftool commands (where <filename> can be any image name):

exiftool –LensModel <filename>

exiftool –Lens <filename>

exiftool –LensType <filename>

Unfortunately, my new Tamron lens does not appear on the Canon Lens Type Values list.

However, there are some xmp tags which Windows Vista as well as other applications such as Microsoft Pro Photo Tools use. These fields, Lens Maker and Lens Model, are accessible via Windows Explorer. To see or edit these fields in Vista right click on an image file and select Properties | Details tab.

My camera, like most, do not write this information directly to these xmp tags. The Lens information could be manually added via the Windows File Properties window but it could be a time consuming task which may be prone to error. So using exiftool, I differentiated which lens was used and automatically added the Lens information to the Vista xmp tags. The commands I used are based on an exiftool forum thread dealing with the subject XMP Lens information and look something like this:

Adding Lens Model information
exiftool -if "$LensModel eq 'EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6'" "-xmp:lensmodel=EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6" *.jpg

Adding Lens Maker information
exiftool -if "$LensModel eq 'EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6'" "-xmp:lensmanufacturer=Canon" *.jpg

* Lens Model information may not be available for most lenses, so try out other lens related parameters (such as Lens, Lenstype…) which could help you in detecting which lens was used.

Now I can include this information as a column in Windows Explorer (This is done by right clicking on the columns header and selecting “More…”) and sort by either Lens Maker and Lens Model fields.

A similar technique can be employed for adding keywords to an image file using the “–keywords” tag in exiftool, which might be useful for some users of Flickr which like to add lens information to their Flickr tags or any other photo organizing application which recognizes these tags.

-keywords+="Lenstype”

Helpful links

• Metadata and the Windows Vista Photo Gallery
• Exiftool Forum

[Read article] Software, camera allies try easing photo data pains

This is great news! While many applications/devices nowadays work with the different metadata standards to some extent (EXIF, IPTC and XMP), there is a big concern about how each application or service are interpreting or reconciling differences in the interpretation of such standards.

A couple of months ago I ranted on how time zones are handled in digital photography. The MWG specification addresses the time zone issue quite nicely. I hope that more companies jump in the effort to maintain interoperability between applications. Online Photo Services such as Kodak’s Photo Gallery, Yahoo’s Flickr need to jump in.

[Related Pages] Metadata Working Group

(Image Credit: Metadata Working Group)

Flickr unveiled a very cool feature which allows photo owners to correct the "Taken in" value which is returned when geotagged photos are added to the popular photo sharing site. The process known as reverse geocoding simply implies determining the location name out of latitude/longitude data- much easier said than done. A blog post on Flickr Corrections on their developer site delves into more detail on the feature, the video is a worth-see of understanding the problem of reverse geocoding and their innovative solution to it.

I hope that Flickr continues to innovate, given that the pace of new features and improvement has slowed down on their site. On this feature I wish they can expose an API so that tools such as Geosetter can take advantage of the functionality as well as including ways to add place names for locations where the information is lacking.

(Image Credit: Flickr)

I continue to receive good feedback and a lot of traffic to my "How I organize my digital photos" post from well over a year ago. I decided to update it a bit to include some new tools I am using and some new habits I have incorporated into my workflow.

http://www.fastcompany.tv/video/exclusive-first-look-worldwide-telescope

Checking out the Democratic Primaries Calendar I could not help wondering what would be like if by early June there is no clear winner in the democratic primaries. Puerto Rico has 63 delegates (more than Iowa), it would be interesting if the contest be settled down here.

Speaking of which, CNN's Election Site does not even mention Puerto Rico. Someone should update those maps.

After starting to use Windows Vista's photo management utility, Windows Photo Gallery, its successor Windows Live Photo Gallery and Microsoft's Photo Info tool I started noticing something strange happening to the date/time taken on some of the photos I had taken. The date/time had shifted after making edits to the photos within these applications. It seemed something wacky was happening to my photo's metadata.

 
Fig. 1: Same photo - different times. Vista's Date taken differs from the Photo Info tool date.

Metadata refers to the information which is embedded into the photo file. Information such as camera settings like Aperture, Exposure bias and of course, date taken, is embedded into what is known in the digital camera industry as the EXIF header. The EXIF date taken is based on the camera's internal clock.

After doing some digging it seems one important time-keeping aspect is not being addressed by most cameras and photo management applications which is the time zone (See here). Lacking time zone information a photo taken say, at 5:22pm can be the subject of interpretation. Such is the case in photo management applications such as Adobe Lightroom and Windows Live Photo Gallery as well as operating systems such as Windows Vista which also employ the XMP standard for metadata. In the XMP standard, date/time values can include a time zone value since it adheres to ISO 8601. Fair enough, but what seems to be happening is that when photos are edited in some applications the EXIF data is moved to XMP or read differently. In Windows Live Photo Gallery it seems to assume that the photo was taken in Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), also referred to as UTC or Zulu Time. The fun does not end there however, because if the photo's time zone is in GMT time the date/time taken displayed may be based on your computer's current time zone settings. Say that photo taken at 5:22pm was taken in New York and when you edit it on your PC the photo management tool will change the date/time taken to UTC which means 17:22 UTC. If your PC's time zone is set to UTC - 4 then the date displayed in Vista would be 1:22pm if someone opens the photo on his/hers PC in Seattle it means the photo was taken at 7:22am given UTC - 8. This also depends of course in the time of the year if daylight savings time is in effect. 

You could approach this issue by simply then setting your camera's clock to UTC time, but I believe the best way to resolve this is that your camera's clock adds time zone information. Still, I have yet to see a camera which does this, I can only guess is that camera manufactures have figured it can lead to further confusion (Say you tend to travel a lot). Until cameras have a GPS emended within them cameras will not be able to automatically figure time zone info by themselves. 

Most of all, I find it disappointing that photo management applications such as Windows Live Photo Gallery lack the ability to display or configure time zone settings on the photos. Today, users are left with little options. Most users are surely unaware (or may don't care) of this issue which might mess up your digital memories.

I am also surprised that photo sharing sites such as Flickr also fail in interpreting time zone. Currently Flickr sets a photo's time zone to the one specified in the account, completely ignoring the time zone specified in the XMP time. I am surprised given that Flickr has an geotagging feature it cannot figure out the time zone. You can read about the confusion in Flickr on time zones in this post.

To fix my photos the only application which I have found which provides support to time zones is Geosetter, a tool for geotagging photos. Given that time zone is a function of location, it is makes sense that such an application provides support for setting time zone values correctly.

Fig. 2: Geosetter provides excellent support for setting time zone values correctly in digital photos.

The future begins...

AT&T's filtering policy is very bad news indeed...

Bad AT&T, bad!

I can understand network monitoring in a workplace environment, but meddling into one's home connection does not sound right. I can imagine a lot of false positives and service disruptions, and I can visualize those who distribute illegal content encrypting and circumventing such filtering measures. Next up, snooping into your phone calls, wait a minute... they already have done that!

I stumbled upon Geosetter the other day and thought it was worth taking some time to write a post about it. This photo geotagging application has all the features I would expect for photo geotagging and more...

Here are some of the features included which I think make it stand apart from other applications:

• Support for different file formats such as DNG, TIF and certain RAW formats
• Automatically add country, city, state location info
• Option to automatically set time zone in date taken
• Support for different GPS track files for automatic geotagging

Overall I give it 5/5 stars! If you are into geotagging give this app a try!

 
(Image Credit: GeoSetter)