Digital Photography Tips and Techniques

Geotagging is the process of adding geographical identification metadata to various media such as photographs, video, websites, or RSS feeds and is a form of geospatial metadata. This data usually consists of latitude and longitude coordinates, though it can also include altitude, bearing, accuracy data, and place names. – [Wikipedia]

Previously, I did a research on geotagging hardwares for Nikon DSLRs and found that most of them are quite expensive, except the $149.99 Geomet’r GPS Receiver Adapter (GNC-35). Here is an user review posted on flickr in the GeoTagging Flickr group. From the comments posted after the review, The GNC-35 seems to work well.

Another low cost GPS geotagging hardware I found is the $149.00 Promote GPS Receiver made by Promote Systems.

All of them should work for Nikon D200, D300, D700, D2H, D2Hs, D2X, D2Xs, D3 and Fuji S5 Pro / IS Pro since they all use the same 10-pin interface and NMEA 0183 communication protocal.

If you already have a GPS unit with 9-pin D-sub serial interface, such as Garmin eTrex, Geko, 60, 76, Rino, GPS, GPSMAP series or Magellan SporTrak series, you only need the $86.47 Nikon MC-35 GPS Adapter Cord for Nikon Digital SLR Cameras. If you don’t care about Nikon brand, you can also get compatible third party products from eBay for 1/3 of the price. Just search for GPS+MC-35 on eBay.

The drawbacks of GPS+MC-35 approach are obvious. First the GPS units with serial interfaces tend to be older units that do not have the latest and greatest GPS technology such as the SiRF Star III chip. Secondly, it will be cumbersome to handle both the camera and a large GPS unit connected by a cable. However if you also need the GPS unit for hiking in the wild, it might actually be a better option.

Update [November 9, 2008]: Amazon is now selling a low cost GPS geotagging unit directly. This Wolverine GEO-35/GEO35 Geotag GPS Receiver for Nikon and Fuji DSLR’s appears to be the same as the Geomet’r except the branding.