The Poor Man's Geotagger

When researching for a location shoot, I spend a lot of time on Google maps looking for places to park, or the easiest walk or even for somewhere to go shoot. Street View allows for a pretty good idea of a place before you get there (admittedly it doesn't help if you want to go be in the middle of a field, but I digress).

The problem I find then is managing the list of places I want to go and check out. Sure you can write them down on a bit of paper, but my hand writing is pants. You can print out your map but that's quite time consuming to get right... Then when you get to the locations, but move down the road a bit... so... I need something to manage a list of locations... with SatNav capability and sharing...

I've got an (android only) app for that.

I have a bit of a problem with my 3D rig and wireless trigger in that they both use the 10-pin port on the camera, so I can't plug in a GPS receiver for geotagging my images as I take them. Enter the Poor Man's Geotagger.

Compatible with every make and model of camera (including film cameras). No need for wires and yet still embeds GPS information in your images (as long as you take a photo of the screen).

So, how does it work. Well, you enter location information into app in one of 3 ways:

• You can maunally add location information with a name and the GPS data obtained from some other means (for example scouting pre-shoot with google maps like I do)
• You can use the GPS in your device to get the current location and store that
• You can import a list from an email or from the file storage on your device

Once you're done, you can reorder the list of points that were not added via the GPS function based on leaving from your current location and getting back there.

Once you're ready to go shooting, you can long touch a location and have the option to use your devices navigation features.

Selecting an entry on the list lets you see the details on the screen, so take a photo and you've just embedded the GPS location into the photo :)

There is obviously a manual step to write the details into the GPS metadata for each photo in your workflow when you get back, but it's not a massive overhead. You also have the added convenience that if the screen is not completely legible in the setup photograph, you can refer back to your list.

Have a really good location list? Well, you can email the list to a buddy who has this app installed, or, it will launch in Google Earth, or, you can import the list into google maps and share through there.

You'd pay £200 quid for a camera branded GPS device. Half that for a jerry rigged GPS unit and cable converters. So how much for this life saving piece of technology? Just £0.59 and for a small additional cost you can purchase the optional weather resistance kit from all good supermarkets (more commonly known as zip-loc sandwich bags)

Get one now, while stocks last...

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.nigeljohnson.android.pmgps