According to Nikon Japan, the GP-1 GPS unit has a suggested retail price of ¥21,000. Quick check using Google showed that it is about US $220 (subject to currency exchange rate variation). The price is similar to the US price we have seen.
There still isn’t much official availability information yet. Someone on DPReview said it should be available before December 10th.
Screenshot of the Nikon Japan page showing GP-1 price
This is the first reported US price of the Nikon GP-1 GPS geotagging unit. J&R has it list for US $239.99 and $30.00 saving brings it to US $209.99 final. The price is consistent with the Canadian price of $275. You still pay a premium for a Nikon brand product but the price isn’t awfully hefty in comparison.
Screen capture of the J&R page (Click to enlarge)
Update [November 26, 2008]: Same price at Adorama.
Nikon GP-1 is a GPS unit for geotagging your images with latitude, longitude, altitude, and time information when you press the shutter release button. It attaches to camera’s accessory shoe or a camera strap and connects to camera’s accessory terminal. Two different connection cables will be provided so it is compatible with all the latest Nikon DSLR cameras: D90, D3, D300, D700, D2Xs and D200. Read More…
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)
I just recently started geotagging using my Nokia E71 cell phone. The phone has built-in 3.2MP camera and GPS. Using a software called locr, the location and time information are recorded in each photo. I can upload the images to locr’s own photo sharing site, or to Yahoo!’s flickr, directly from the phone. It is very nice! If I geotag all my phones, I won’t need to scratch my head trying to figure out where the heck I took the photo later, especially when my memory starts to fade when I am older.
As you may already know, you don’t need a GPS to do geotagging. The cheapest way is to find the spot where you took the phone on Google Earth or other mapping sites and manually insert the GPS coordinates in the EXIF header. Flickr allows you to do this easily. However this is really tedious and time consuming. I start to think how I can add location information to the images taken using Nikon DSLR cameras without the hassle of manually editing hundreds of photos I typically take each time. Read More…
