Geotagging Module with showing Heading (Compass Direction)

[Sebastian GPS-Camera]

Up to now AS knows no real Geotagging function itself. There is a Plugin for that issue, called asGPS

asGPS cannot show the image direction (heading) on the map. AfterShot Core does not support the involved EXIF-fields. There are more cameras and geotaggers that write the image direction to the EXIF of JPEG and RAW.

The best implementation I know so far for presentation of the compass heading is in the freeware geosetter. It uses the focal length to calculate a "triangle of view". Zooming will cause a slim triangle, wide angle a wide angle:
Here is a - low quality - video for better understanding. It shows quite good what I mean:

It would be great to have the focus distance also involved. But this seems to be difficult as most cams do not write it standardized to the EXIF

What else could Heading be good for?
There are many ideas for usage of compass headings. Here two ideas that have been prototyped by university students:

1. Filtering photo databases according to position of the sun

Just find all pictures with dawn light from the left. All with front light. All with ...

(Source and explanation in German)

2. Generate Proposals for naming the photographed Object for Semi-Automatic-Tagging

The user gets offers for objects that are in the angel of view and can use them for tagging. He just checks those offer he wants to be safed with the photo.

(Source and explanation in German)

Are there Cameras with GPS + Compass (Heading)?

yes, at the moment I count more than 40+ Cameras and Geotaggers. And by the dates you can see the number ist starting to grow really fast. In the beginning (2008 it was only Solmeta for Nikon and Ricoh). The boom starts 2011 and 2012:

DSLR and Medium Format

Nikon DSLR:
Solmeta Geotagger N2/Pro/N3 (since 2008!)
Dawntech M3-DC Digital Compass (03/2012)

for Nikon DSLR (D3100, D3200, D5000, D5100, D7000, D90, D300, D300s, D700, D800, D3hx, D2hs, D3, D3x, D3s, D4

Canon DSLR
Canon GP-E1(05/2012)
Canon GP-E2 (05/2012)
for Canon 7D, 5DMIII, 1Dx, 650D (4T Rebel)

For Pentax DSLR and Medium Format
Pentax O-GPS1 (2011)
for K5, Kr, 645

Compact/Bridge:
Nikon Coolpix AW100 Outdoor-Cam GPS + Compass (09/2011)
Nikon Coolpix S9300 suoperzoom with GPS + Compass (03/2012)
Olympus Tough TG-1 Outdoor with GPS + Compass (06/2012)
Ricoh Caplio G500SE + GPS/Compass unit
Ricoh Caplio G700SE with Ricoh GP-1 GPS-unit (07/2010)
Samsung WB850F GPS + Compass(04/2012)
Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX5V GPS + compass (2010)
Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX7V GPS + compass (02/2011)
Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX9V GPS + compass (04/2011)
Sony Cyber-shot DSC-TX100V GPS und Kompass (2011)
Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX100V GPS + Compass (2011)
Sony Cyber-shot DSC-TX200V GPS + compass (03/2012)
Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX10V GPS + Compass (04/2012)
Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX20V GPS + Compass (05/2012)
Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX200V GPS + Compass (03/2012)
(source: Actual Lists of all cameras, DSLR, Medium Format, compact, EVIL with integrated GPS or GPS-interface)

Has anyone more Cool Ideas about Compass Heading?

Who else, but me, dreams of such features?

Please reply, to show, that I am not alone with my wish. Thanks!

Cheers!

[Sebastian GPS-Camera]

The original opening discussion with some tests of JPG and NEF (Nikon RAW) containing image direction on AS-Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/CorelAfterShot ... 6869834237

[Dutchmm]

Hi Sebastian

I ran the following command on an original raw file, to copy across your compass settings to the jpg I had output from AS

Code: Select all

exiftool -tagsfromfile Nikon_D700_NEF_GPS_Kompass.NEF -EXIF:GPSImgDirection -EXIF:GPSImgDirectionRef /home/mike/Desktop/Nikon_D700_NEF_GPS_Kompass.jpg 

Then when you list the EXIF tags on the JPG, you find that the correct information has been carried across. Now the trick is to find a way of automating this into your workflow.
I can think of a possible (well, two possible) way(s), depending on the following:

Files are copied from CF/SD to an import directory whose structure exactly matches the AS output structure - this allows us to run a script at output time, take the file name of the now demosaicised JPG, and compute the path to the input RAW (another queue could do the same with straight ooc JPGs), then run exiftool with the desired tag names ...

Alternately, and not really sensible if you shoot RAW+JPG - I assume this is possible on your Nikons, is to output the JPGs into the directory from which you imported the RAW, This means your script doesn't need to know anything about the directory structure. Then the script just says:

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh 
Ofname=`echo $1 | sed -e "s/\.jpg/\.NEF/g`
exiftool -tagsfromfile $Ofname -EXIF:GPSImgDirection -EXIF:GPSImgDirectionRef $1

HTH

Mike

[gernihem]

Compact/Bridge:
Nikon Coolpix AW100 Outdoor-Cam GPS + Compass (09/2011)
Nikon Coolpix S9300 suoperzoom with GPS + Compass (03/2012)
Olympus Tough TG-1 Outdoor with GPS + Compass (06/2012)
Ricoh Caplio G500SE + GPS/Compass unit
Ricoh Caplio G700SE with Ricoh GP-1 GPS-unit (07/2010)
Samsung WB850F GPS + Compass(04/2012)
Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX5V GPS + compass (2010)
Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX7V GPS + compass (02/2011)
Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX9V GPS + compass (04/2011)
Sony Cyber-shot DSC-TX100V GPS und Kompass (2011)
Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX100V GPS + Compass (2011)
Sony Cyber-shot DSC-TX200V GPS + compass (03/2012)
Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX10V GPS + Compass (04/2012)
Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX20V GPS + Compass (05/2012)
Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX200V GPS + Compass (03/2012)
(source: Actual Lists of all cameras, DSLR, Medium Format, compact, EVIL with integrated GPS or GPS-interface)

Has anyone more Cool Ideas about Compass Heading?

Who else, but me, dreams of such features?

Please reply, to show, that I am not alone with my wish. Thanks!

Cheers!

i'd love to have this feature too. any updates about it?

[jeronimo]

Has anyone more Cool Ideas about Compass Heading?

Could be used to find, what pictures contain a specific point or part designated on a specific picture (with user having to specify the distance) : to be able to find pictures containing the same element seen from different angle.
Could be also used to find what pictures contain a view of the position from which a specific picture was taken.

Probably not very useful, but cool...