Geo-tagging photographs with a GPS unit

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I bought one of these Sony units about six months ago, and although it's a great idea, it doesn't work as well as I'd hoped.

The way it works is very simple - it records your position every 15 seconds, along with the exact time, and then the software matches up the time stamps in the GPS device with the time stamps on your photos to determine the location in which a photo was taken.

The first issue is that you have to make sure the time settings on your camera are *very* accurate, meaning less than 30 seconds of error when setting the time from a very reliable source like http://www.time.gov/

Secondly, the GPS hardware in the Sony device is not very good. The accuracy is often no better than a few hundred feet from your actual location, and the device itself must be pointed *directly* at the sky at all times (I actually duct taped it to the top of my baseball cap at one point). Half the time, it didn't record my position at all.

My recommendation would be to spend a few more bucks and buy a better GPS unit, and then use its track logs to geolocate your photos using software like Greg mentioned above. I ended up buying a Garmin 60Csx, which is very accurate (if a little expensive), and only needs the antenna peeking out of my backpack to reliably record GPS data.

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