Comments on: Geotagging Photos With Aperture & QStarz BT-1300S

By: Harun Abdurrazaq

Harun Abdurrazaq — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 01:16:31 +0000

I just got a Qstarz QT-1300 GPS receiver. It pairs via bluetooth to my N810 running Diablo. Maemo Mapper or Wayfinder can use it as an external GPS.
The device also does data logging. I’m looking for a way to transfer the binary log files from the GPS receiver to my N810 via Bluetooth.
I don’t expect to convert the log files to other formats or do photo-geotagging or other operations on my N810, but I want to store the log files so that they can be processed on a PC at a later time.

By: Chris Cornelis

Chris Cornelis — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 08:36:29 +0000

My iPhone app GeoLogTag offers an all-in-one geotagging solution for Mac users. It tracks your location during a photoshoot and geotags your photos afterwards over WiFi. No extra hardware or software is required. Support for both JPEG and the most popular RAW formats. There is a free version of GeoLogTag available too. It's fully functional except for the fact that tracked locations are automatically removed after 2 hours.

By: Brad Mohr

Brad Mohr — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 06:37:55 +0000

It occurs to me that they might have changed the cable rather than the device. It’s easy to imagine a scenario in which AMOD switched cable suppliers to save a penny or two each and never bothered to check whether their cheap commodity cables actually fit. The same could be true of the strap.

By: bbum

bbum — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 02:08:00 +0000

Huh — they must have changed it since you picked one up. I have heard of a couple of folks indicate that the strap doesn’t get in the way.

I’m tempted to pick up one even though I banged through the Qstarz busticated software experience so that it is now pretty seamless.

By: Brad Mohr

Brad Mohr — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 19:29:50 +0000

Have they redesigned the AGL-3080 recently? I've had one for a couple years and haven't removed the strap yet. I've found the workflow to be pretty smooth: connect the AGL-3080 (it mounts like a flash drive), copy over the log files, let HoudahGeo do it's magic, then import into Lightroom. I've got my fingers crossed that Lightroom 3 will eliminate the HoudahGeo step à la Aperture 3, though I'm not particularly optimistic. I'm not too optimistic about camera makers getting on the ball, either. When I bought the AMOD in 2008, I fully expected it to be supplanted by built-in GPS by now. Sigh. I know it's moot at this point, but I've put a couple pictures of the AGL-3080 with the strap and USB cable both attached on flickr.

By: bbum

bbum — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 18:20:21 +0000

To be fair, the AGL-3080 — the device I sent back due to the stupidity of the strap blocking the USB port — is likely a more seamless experience for Mac users. Now that I have things working, I won’t investigate further unless someone sends me a device.

By: James Duncan Davidson

James Duncan Davidson — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 16:54:58 +0000

Thanks for the writeup.. It’s timely as I’m researching trackers to take with me on the big trip coming up. It seems like everything at the sub-$100 point has gotchas of one kind or another. I’ve thought about getting one of the new Garmin super duper machines, but given that I have an iPhone for most of my mapping needs, it seems a bit excessive.

By: ssp

ssp — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 13:55:08 +0000

That Aperture behaviour isn’t quite what I’m looking for, but probably makes more sense in a professional workflow than it makes in iPhoto. I quite like iTunes’ way of doing things where the metadata in the database and those in the files are identical. It gives me the good feeling that my library is in good shape and I could take it onto another software without losing much.

I wonder whether we’ll even see good GPS/BT software then. If, as you predict, many cameras will come with BT soon, the demand for this may be even smaller than it is today.

When looking at the tracks I got out of ‘my’ little GPS gadget I also thought good software should probably do some processing of the data before using it. As the signal can be quite ‘wiggly’ at times and occasionally contains points that are hundreds of kilometres off, the data could to with some cleaning and ‘smoothing’ in many (most?) situations.

It’s a shame so many devices are made by Windows-only shops. A big problem is that even if they want to provide a Mac version, they seem to be very likely to just outsource it to whoever comes knocking first an most likely is a complete imbecile. I recently read a review about USB UMTS sticks on the Mac. It was hilarious because many of them looked _extremely_ amateurish and some of them even damaged the system beyond repair (I think the installer overwrote the system’s libcurl with its own version that didn’t have 64bit support). The reviewer there said that, while shocking, it at least made it easy for him to give very concrete disrecommendations…

By: bbum

bbum — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:34:53 +0000

The devices are just poorly implemented. There is nothing about Mac OS X that prevents writing decent client software for any given device, as demonstrated by the handful of open source [poorly designed] software that “just works” and does so using the standard APIs on the system. The client software market for devices seems to lag the rest of the market by 18 months to 3 year; Epilog’s laser printers are Windows only even though the Mac dominates the Maker community that is their primary market, you can’t get a decent digital microscope with Mac client software even though the Mac is huge in science/education, and Garmin is just about the only GPS maker with decent Mac software.

Aperture has a strong notion of Master — the original image — vs. Versions — the post-processed images. You generally export versions and these versions do have the GPS metadata shoved into the EXIF, along with everything else.

On my son’s iMac, he has an iPhoto library of photos of interest, most of which are sourced from my master Aperture library. It “just works”; I do the initial import, sort&select, processing and metadata, then export a set of versions to Roger’s computer and drop them on the iPhoto icon.

By: ssp

ssp — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 12:22:08 +0000

Your report sounds very similar to my experience trying to use a friend's GPS logging device (GRays something, called Wintec WBT-x00 by software). HoudahGPS (and previously are more arcane GUI for GPSBabel) seem to be the only viable ways of using those little toys. I am wondering: is this somewhat sad situation due to Apple ignoring these devices or due to a lack of stadardisation which makes it hard to support them in a consistent fashion? Also: in iPhoto, GPS support sucks as setting the location in the application will only store it in its database rather than in the file – thus tying you to the application more than seems advisable and creating a path to data loss. As a consequence I always have to add GPS EXIF data to my images with external tools (own script or, these days, GeoTagger) which isn't overly convenient. Does Aperture, as 'pro' application, take a more reasonable approach on this?