GPS Enabled Cameras

[MattMorris]

I am looking for input from any who are using GPS enabled cameras...which ones are good and why, what you like about them, what you don't. We are looking hard at putting them into field use and it would be great to get some direct input from current users.

Any help is appreciated

Matt

[roberthaught1]

Have you tryed a blue tooth camera, it should be able to link photo to photo is field via the nomad blue tooth

[BrianChaille]

The Ricoh G700SE does look like it was designed for enterprise wide accurate photo location tagging.  Has anyone had experience with Nikon's Coolpix AW100?  I'm hoping for 3m +/- location accuracy and say 11 degree direction accuracy in a GPS/Compass Enabled Camera.  I understand that the Ricoh G700SE has an optional GPS WAAS enabled attachment that can provide 3m and 3 degree accuracy.  I havn't found similar specs on the Nikon, but I prefer it's compact design.  Both claim field ruggedness.  I'm not particularly interested in adding a lazer rangefinder to the mix which the Ricoh can add through its Bluetooth capacity.

[GrahamW]

the richo 500SE can recieve a NMEA stream from bluetooth..... I've attached that to an RTK unit for centimeter photos.. but the direction of photo is also important when we are talking about that sort of accuracy.. so the GPS/Compass unit is still nessecary..

[IvanKautter]

Some very expensive solutions being discussed in this thread. 

We purchased a Pentax WG-1 GPS camera ($250) about 6 months ago and have had good results even under relatively heavy tree canopy.  In an urban environment, I would expect performance equal to smartphone GPS chips.  The Pentax also makes a primitive KML-based GPS tracklog.  The camera itself is pretty terrible under low light conditions.  If we had it to do again, I would have recommended that we purchased the Panasonic DMC-TS3A ($240) which has better low light performance.

Back at the office, one can use ArcPhoto ( http://arcscripts.esri.com/details.asp?dbid=14856 ), a free set of tools that will read the embedded GPS data in the EXIF, to create a geolocated photo layer on-the-fly or create a photo feature class with option to treat the photos as managed or unmanaged rasters.

If you are looking for "good enough" and cheap, I'd suggest exploring these options.  We have yet to attempt integration with ArcPad.

[ColinLee1]

mmattix444;150535 wrote:
Another workflow you can consider involves the following 3 items:

* A GPS photo-linking program (a free one to try is JetPhoto)
* Any digital camera
* Turning on and using the ArcPad Track Log

mmattix: I've had luck using a garmin gps tracklog with a digital camera and post-processing with gpicsync, jetphoto, arcphoto, and microsoft prophoto tools (all free).  BUT, I'm having trouble getting this to work using arcpad because the track log is saved as a shapefile, while the programs require .gpx.  I tried converting the shapefile to gpx using dnrgarmin, but it didn't read it correctly.  Any help with this?  Thanks.

[MicheleMattix2]

Colin -

You can try the free My GeoData online converter http://converter.mygeodata.eu/.  Another suggestion is to first convert the SHP to KML and then use GPS Babel to go from KML to GPX.

Good luck!
Michele

[PaulHuffman]

http://arcscripts.esri.com/details.asp?dbid=14856[/url] ), a free set of tools that will read the embedded GPS data in the EXIF, to create a geolocated photo layer on-the-fly or create a photo feature class with option to treat the photos as managed or unmanaged rasters.ArcPad.

I've been trying that ArcScript but I can't get it to run with Desktop 10.1.  When I try to run the exe, it asks for ESRI .NET support.  I verified that the machine has .NET Framework 2.0 installed. When I try to add .NET support to ArcDesktop 10.1 with add remove programs, I don't see the option for .NET anymore.

[IvanKautter]

At 10.1 you don't need to use ArcPhoto as much of the functionality is available in the Photo Toolset

http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/main/10.1/index.html#//001700000164000000