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Geotagging photos- photo time adjustment

Former Member over 12 years ago

Hi-

I'm new to the basecamp software, I'm used to MicroSoft Phototools. I'm running Basecamp 3.3.3- When I Geotag photos using a track, I note there is a dialog box that lets me adjust for any time offset between the camera and GPS.

Can thisbe made to allow this dialog to work interactively so I can see where the photographs sit on a map? I usually know exactly where I took at least one photograph in a set. I can think of two ways to do this:

The first is the way MicroSoft does it- move the time slider until the photographs are in the right location and save it.

Another method (I don't know if anyone implements this method) is to let me drag a picture to its correct location on the track (let me zoom in or out on the map, and pan it if needed!). When I'm satisfied with the location for that picture on the track, ask me if the time-offset should be applied to all the photographs that I'm importing. This may be easier to use than the way MicroSoft does it!

I'm also open for suggestions on how to better use the software as it exists now- perhaps there's something easy to do so I can determine the offset prior to tagging the photographs.

Right now, I use two programs- one for photo editing to get the time for a picture off the EXIF metadata, and Basecamp so I can see the nearest point on a track for a picture, which lets me then determine the offset. It would be nice if everything could be done in Basecamp!

Thanks for listening!

0 Former Member over 12 years ago

BaseCamp 4.0 beta accurately used EXIF data to place a photo I shot on film and geotagged using a waypoint with Geosetter. It wouldn't work with a full size 50MB photo, but worked fine with a 250KB photo. Considering that photos are copied into the database, it makes sense to downsize them anyway.

0 Former Member over 12 years ago

I have used a GPS enabled camera for several years.

It has been a continued source of frustration that Basecamp uses timestamps by default and not the actual exif GPS location.

I have observed differences of kilometers between the Basecamp location and where I know the photo to have been taken.

My question is, why isn't the location data used by default?

BaseCamp certainly does use the EXIF data. Can you provide an example file where that doesn't work?

0 Former Member over 12 years ago

Update for anyone else that wants a work-around:

Taking a picture of the GPS screen sort of works- gets you to within a minute on a Nüvi or a cell phone, although this idea works perfectly with a GPS V as this unit displays seconds and the others don't.

What works better with a Nüvi is setting the camera clock ahead of the GPS and when the minute flips on the GPS, save the same time on the camera and the clocks are synchronized fairly well and there is no need to mess with the offset in BaseCamp.

0 AndyT3 over 12 years ago

Something I found a while ago and recently dug up.

How to sync your GPS, computer and camera. May not work for all camera models.

http://feedback.trekk.it/knowledgebase/articles/37822-getting-in-sync-ensuring-your-camera-gps-and-pc

0 Former Member over 12 years ago

Andy-

That's very helpful. I'm still learning the Canon software and I'll give it a go.

Does BaseCamp set the computer clock from the GPS? If so, I haven't found it yet.

0 AndyT3 over 12 years ago

I don't know - I have just downloaded the latest Mapsource update and will use that.
I recently built a new PC and lost Mapsource in the process, it is a useful tool to have anyway.

0 3780243 over 2 years ago in reply to Former Member

Thanks for your answer. I've checked the camera clock and this is OK, times that Exif info show are within times in the selected track points. However when using the function to add geodata to photo's it does not find corresponding photo's. It does find a photo when I change the time* of the photo in such a way that it is exactly the same time - same hour, minute and second - as a point within the track. It looks like if Basecamp is not using a time window anymore to select photos in that time window.

*in most cases by only one or a few seconds

0 3780243 over 2 years ago

Thanks for your answer. I'm using Basecamp from the time it replaced Mapsource. I've never had problems adding geoinfo to photo's taken with cameras that had possibility to store the location directly to the Exif info of the photo. I'll try your suggestion to drag a picture to the right location. However I still hope to find a way to solve the problem I recently encountered.