Marking geo location

[Inayat Noor]

I would like to know if I am at a location I would like to return to, is there an app or device which would record/mark my geo location? It would store the location and I would be able to return to the exact location in the future being guided by the device/app?

Thank you

[jp]

Any smartphone likely records the location with every photo. My android phone, open the pic up in google afterwards, and it shows the location on the right. There's also an app "My Tracks" which will save GPS tracks and position for later review in google earth or for exercise stats. The old fashioned way to do that would be a standalone GPS device and record waypoints, but my experience is that they eat batteries faster than cell phones and it's sometimes tough to get the data off them with proprietary cables, etc...

[vinny]

Most reliable would be a gps unit. They've been around for 20+ years and aren't nearly as intuitive as the iphone but are designed for exactly what you want.

[Drew Bedo]

I am not sure that I understand the need for an electronic device to get you back to the location. Unless you are in a trackless desert or snow covered tundra. . . .

Having said that, the phone idea sure seems to be the answer. The image alone would be a help.

[Jmarmck]

I do GPS mapping at work. They can be easy to hard depending on the mapping software. I have the smartphone that will record a position....and show it on google map in real time. I also have a Spot Gen3 unit. I simply hit a button and the point is sent to a website provided by Spot. I can download the data as KML file for later mapping.

[Bill Burk]

I use a first generation Spot messenger, and find that it works more slowly than I do. So I find that it's not going to tell me where the photograph was taken, so much as where I was the day I took that photograph. In itself, that helps a lot. Then Google Earth can help you home in on remembering where it was you were.

[Delfi_r]

I use the Viewfinder app (http://www.artistsviewfinder.com/): you record the place and the correct frames on it. It's a real substitute of cine finders, perhaps not so useful as real viewfinder for a LF camera.

[Doremus Scudder]

Doesn't GoogleMaps allow you to mark a location? "YourPlaces" would seem to do the job.
Then again, there's always the map and the pencil...
Doremus

[Roger Thoms]

I bought the Hunter Theodlite just for this purpose. Works well on my IPad and is available for the iPhone. http://hunter.pairsite.com/theodolite/

Roger

[Drew Bedo]

I understand that Fixing and recording the geographic co-ordinates of a location is easily done today.

In what photographic endeavor is it critical to document the location with GPS precision?
Having fixed and recorded the position; electronically, how does one get the information onto the film?

[jp]

For work, I often photography utility poles, conduits, radio towers and their viewsheds. Good to know where it as as they start to look the same in many cases.

For LF / fun photography, I often visit a nearby spot and the light is not right or I run out of film and I want some sort of reminder of the possibilities, so a GPS tagged digital snapshot has all the details one needs for that.

[Jmarmck]

Ah, viewsheds so much fun to work with.

[vinny]

I understand that Fixing and recording the geographic co-ordinates of a location is easily done today.

In what photographic endeavor is it critical to document the location with GPS precision?
Having fixed and recorded the position; electronically, how does one get the information onto the film?

It's called scouting. You're driving, you see a great place to shoot, you mark it's coordinates. I've traveled to 45+ states so there's no way I can remember all the places I'd like to return to.
faster than carrying detailed maps of the entire country. get it?

[Delfi_r]

I bought the Hunter Theodlite just for this purpose. Works well on my IPad and is available for the iPhone. http://hunter.pairsite.com/theodolite/

Roger

thanks Roger for the pointer, I'll take a look of this app.


Having fixed and recorded the position; electronically, how does one get the information onto the film?



You can always translate the detailed information to a scan of your image, or print it on the back or your silver copy.

[David R Munson]

At least for my purposes, I see GPS information as being of primary importance for scouting. Coordinates tagged with notes are searchable, and as I'm wandering around I often have ideas I can't act on at that time, so being able to record a place along with a note about why it matters is pretty useful.

[Doremus Scudder]

When scouting close to home and for places I want to come back to or be reminded I'm close to, I've just been using the reminder app that comes with the iPhone. I'll enter the place name and a few salient remarks and then set the app to remind me "at a location," which I set to be where I'm standing at the time. So, I can check the reminders and go back when I want, or, when I'm out photographing and not even aware I'm close, the reminder function will give me a little jingle and let me know I'm near a place I wanted to work.

Works for smaller numbers of near places.

Doremus

[Drew Bedo]

I guess I am just getting old—I still use a flip-phone. I have never had the need for the precision of FPS co-ordinates to go back to a place that I have already been to. A few notes were enough.

So let me get this right: The reasons for GPS documentation are either related to digital photography for commercial work or for remembering a promising location for later LF photography. , The data is never actually transferred to the film.

[Jmarmck]

No. The data is not transferred to the film. I looked at some EXIF editors last night but found nothing that would allow me to insert Lat/Lon on my neg scans.
I was hoping to put other info in the metadata but was unsuccessful.

[Drew Bedo]

I have an 8x10 dark slide that came in a box-lot of surplus medical imaging equipment. This particular dark slide has a narrow clear plastic window along one edge. I have never used it for anything, but never got rid of it either. I assume that one could mark on the plastic with a grease pen or other erasable marker, then insert a loaded film holder into a camera and pull the its dark slide out. The window dark slide would be inserted and the shutter tripped. The window dark slide would be removed and the actual exposure made and the original dark slide re-inserted. As I write this it seems akwqrd and complex, but I'm sure that its not really.

That could be a way to get the location data on the neg. I can't think of any other reason for a glazed window in a dark slide.

[Drew Wiley]

This is all foreign to me. Location was always determined and remembered by simply looking at one mtn then another, this canyon or that. Guess I'd have a hard time in Kansas.

[Drew Bedo]

Drew: I have heard (this is only hearsay) that in Kansas there is a a small hill with a tree on it right near the bend in the Interstate.

[Drew Wiley]

Bad humor, but here it is: A fellow from that part of the world used to work here, and I was always kidding him about the highest point in Kansas daily changing,
depending on where the cattle were moving and what the flies were eating.

[Heroique]

I am not sure that I understand the need for an electronic device to get you back to the location...


This is all foreign to me. Location was always determined and remembered by simply looking at one mtn then another, this canyon or that...

Me three.

Reminds me of the paper map/magnetic compass thread.

Seems that old-fashioned things are, well, out of fashion, but it's always interesting to hear the justifications – the good ones and bad ones.

[jp]

We don't have canyons. Or what people out west would call mountains. Our hills and mountains are not usually visible through thick woods. We also have fog rivaling or exceeding what San Francisco gets to obscure visibility. Being able to visually determine where you are is a good skill, but backup options are good too.

I can be 20 feet away from something in the woods in some places and not see it. E.G. the North Pond Hermit lived about an hour away from me and lived hidden in the woods for 27 years.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2730185/I-lost-track-I-I-didn-t-care-Maine-North-Pond-Hermit-breaks-silence-27-years-living-woods-says-prison-worse.html

[Jmarmck]

Bad humor, but here it is: A fellow from that part of the world used to work here, and I was always kidding him about the highest point in Kansas daily changing,
depending on where the cattle were moving and what the flies were eating.:)
Oh, come on now, Kansas it not that flat.
The highest point(s) in Mississippi County, Arkansas is a toss up. You can choose either the overpasses on I-55 or the local landfill.
The area between Crowley's Ridge (Forrest City) and Memphis is as flat or flatter than west Texas. I have seen some killer sunsets and sunrises in that stretch.
This time of year add the ducks and geese that winter in Eastern Arkansas. Great photo op if you can get away from the duck hunters.

[Drew Bedo]

OK . . .lets turn it around for a moment.

Houston is on the Gulf of Mexico's costal plane, Most of the city has an elevation above sea level that can be expressed in single digets. The land here is so featurless that if you go to the top floor of the Transco Tower you can see the curvature of the earth!

Is it still called the "The Transco Tower? Or is it the Williams Tower now (or is that what it used to be?) They have changed its' name at least once and the ball parks several tuimesa each too . . .can't keep up.

[Drew Wiley]

I rely almost completely on landmarks, though do keep maps in the truck. I haven't been to LA for a long time. But back when I did drive thru downtown, I'd know
which freeways and exits to take by reference to certain smoggy silhouettes of tall buildings in the vicinity. One winter night it rained heavily, and the next morning I found myself driving down the freeway with this massive in-focus cityscape in front of me, surrounded by snow-covered mountains. I got totally lost!

[Jmarmck]

I like getting lost. You can find many new things. Just gotta know the land and have a means of locating north or any other direction. Thoughts of "if I keep heading (pick a direction) I have to cross that (pick a linear land feature) eventually, then I will know where I am." I have oft said that I am not lost, I just don't know exactly where I am. As a young man who just got his first vehicle I spend many a night/day roaming the roads of Northern Arkansas. There are so many dirt roads and passible decades old logging trails that it would take a lifetime to learn them. Many I can drive every curve and dip in my mind.

But the geotagging helps. It has helped me keep a log of what shots were where in hopes of avoiding the lengthy google street searches trying to find out where a 30 year old photo was taken. (Was that Mono Lake or Crowley Lake, Saline Valley or DV?) I still have some shots I cannot figure where I was when I took it, even after being there in the last couple months.

I have a theory I want to try too. I used the geotracker every time I setup the camera. I want to take that point and measure the arc of the view and compare that to the angle of view of each lens. Just curious. I am hoping physics will remain true. I hate to admit it but I forgot to log which lens I used in some locations. Besides the location of each shot would work well incorporated into a presentation.

[Drew Wiley]

Sometimes I get deliberately lost. Did that once in Wyoming. Just headed into the mtns wherever at a whim. Toward the end of the trip, when I had to find my
way out of there and get back to my job, I dug the topo map out of the bottom of the pack, identified landmarks, and proceeded. The only electronic technology I
really want along is a light meter. I typically don't even carry a watch. I can count off the second for a long exposure fairly well. I just don't understand why anyone would want to wander off into the hills just to be tormented every ten minutes with the latest stock report, or current price of a DLSR at B&H or Amazon,
or the location of some bit of slime mold under a log via GPS. But some people can't seem to live without those gadgets. Wonder how John Muir ever did it without a Smartphone? ... or what "My First Summer in the Sierra" would read like in abbreviated intermittent texting grunts instead of book form?

[Heroique]

This thread has taken a disorienting turn and is getting lost. :cool:

I don't think I've ever deliberately got lost, but I have deliberately found my way again many times – enough times to make getting lost again, by accident, very difficult.

It's still paper, pencil, straight edge, landmarks, and magnetism for me.

[Regular Rod]

I would like to know if I am at a location I would like to return to, is there an app or device which would record/mark my geo location? It would store the location and I would be able to return to the exact location in the future being guided by the device/app?

Thank you

Go to your app store and search for Tomstrails it's free and very good.

RR

[Drew Wiley]

Anyone walking into the woods staring at their GPS the whole time is disoriented to begin with. Do the squirrels and badgers need those things? More junk lost
in the ecosystem, when someone trips over a log due to paying to much attention to their techie toys, and thereby becomes a part of exactly the scavenger food
chain they were hoping to avoid.