Geotagging your DSLR photos using the built-in GPS on your iPhone

Hi there,

I was considering investing some money on an external GPS tracker to tag my photos. Eventually, by browsing on internet I just realized that I have been carrying my GPS tracker with me all the time: my iPhone. I just tested the workflow with Nikon photos, it worked just fine. So I would like to share this trick here in case some people want to do the same. This idea has been around for quite some time already, but I could not find in any posts in this forum yet.

For those who have an iPhone, the beauty of this method is that since it is your cell phone, in principle, it is always with you in the field. The best part is: it is typically charged already. You don't need to worry about recharging the battery of an external device whenever you want to use it.

You only need two easy-to-use applications:
1) GPS Stone for iPhone: it is free, works beautifully with no advertisements.
2) GPSPhotoLinker: Free Mac application. Again, works perfectly with professional results.

Just use the iPhone app to track the GPS coordinates in background mode, you can keep it running for as many hours as you want, perhaps days! After finishing shooting your DSLR photos, just export the GPS coordinates from within the iPhone app to you by e-mail. When you import your photos on the computer. Just launch the GPSPhotoLinker that will quickly geotag all your RAW or JPG photos using the GPS file you received by e-mail. It works great without any hassle!

Ok, I am a Mac user with an iPhone. If you have a PC and/or another smartphone. I am pretty sure you can do the same, just need to look for it on the web.

I hope this is helpful in anyway.

Finally, these two apps are free. However, if you think this workflow works fine for your needs, please consider buying the pro iPhone app and/or donating some bucks to the Mac app developer.

Well that's my Sunday project - thanks for the heads-up.

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Well that's my Sunday project - thanks for the heads-up.

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I am glad to help. I hope you managed to get it working for you. An important piece of information I forgot to mention is that the camera and the iPhone should have the same date and time settings. I believe is clear for everyone but just to confirm, the geotag software will match the pictures and the GPS coordinates by looking at the time stamp on the picture, then find the location where the iPhone was at that point in time.

I am just a bit disappointed that I did not realize this was possible before the holidays!

Cheers!

GPS Stone for iPhone is so far the best app i came across, had to purchase it but it is worth buying..i have tested GPS Data, Geotag Lite, PixTrack(second best).
Am a PC user and the alternative to GPSPhotoLinker is Adobe Lightroom 4.4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tV0piYKczI

Wonderful! I am so happy that I dumped my relatively new Nokia Windows based phone (hated it with a blind passion) and took over my wife's older iPhone (she updated to a new iPhone - I like the older iPhone much better than my Nokia).

Would I need phone service to geotag my images? I am traveling to Venice, Greece and Istanbul and don't intend to have cell phone service in these locations...

Actually, it should be pretty easy for me to locate my images... Venice looks nothing like Greece and Istanbul is different from both of them. I did have problems during my trip to China and got a couple of cities mixed up in labeling the images. This was especially true within a couple of cities I visited during a pretty hard rainstorm during a single day. Most of my shots were done indoors and I had to email a fellow tour member to locate a restaurant that I shot in...

I have the Nikon GP-1, so I get the location data written to the metadata file as I shoot. No messing about with apps.

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Originally Posted by cnick

... An important piece of information I forgot to mention is that the camera and the iPhone should have the same date and time settings. ...

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Actually. GPSPhotoLinker can shift the timestamps in the EXIF by an offset, so if you forget to synchronize the camera's clock, you can fix that after the fact.

Obviously, you don't have to worry about the accuracy of the timestamps in the GPS track file. :)

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Originally Posted by rpcrowe

Would I need phone service to geotag my images? ...

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Theoretically no. In practice maybe. GPS is a separate radio protocol and doesn't rely on the absence/presence of a cell tower connection--just the absence/presence of a connection to GPS satellites overhead. :) But, like any GPS receiver, you need a clear view of at least four satellites. Sometimes you won't get this (urban canyons, indoors, tree cover), so the iPhone relies on two other forms of location data: cell tower triangulation, and mapped wifi hotspots. If you don't have service, cell tower triangulation won't work, and wi-fi hotspot mapping only works if you're near a wi-fi hotspot that's been mapped. As an iPodTouch owner, where all location information is done via wi-fi hotspot mapping, I can tell you the information is far from complete or accurate.

If anybody is interested in another, new application for the iPhone that records GPS tracks for later photo geotagging, I invite you to try Trckr. This is a general-purpose GPS tracker that was created with photo geotagging in mind. It is very light, easy to use, and cares about the battery life especially when running in background.

A more manual method which I'm a big fan of is to take a reference shot with the iPhone at the end of every shot session, then later, after I've copied the photos from my camera and my iPhone to my computer, geotag my camera photos to the same coordinates as the reference iPhone photo.

That said, I'm going to try Geostone! Thanks for the tip!

I know Im quite late to the party! But I wanted to add my two cents.

Using this article I was able to get a good start, and find some other tools. Im using the GPS Stone app for iPhone with Photolinker for osx.

They both cost $$, but like anything that works well, it usually does carry a price tag. 2 USD for phone app, and 30 for desktop app. 30 day trial for the photolinker too!

In comparison to the 250 to add this feature to my nikons it was a no brainer.

Works excellent.

And thanks for the headstart!:D

**Works great in lightroom as well! But not everyone has or needs lightroom.

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Originally Posted by cnick

Hi there,

I was considering investing some money on an external GPS tracker to tag my photos. Eventually, by browsing on internet I just realized that I have been carrying my GPS tracker with me all the time: my iPhone. I just tested the workflow with Nikon photos, it worked just fine. So I would like to share this trick here in case some people want to do the same. This idea has been around for quite some time already, but I could not find in any posts in this forum yet.

For those who have an iPhone, the beauty of this method is that since it is your cell phone, in principle, it is always with you in the field. The best part is: it is typically charged already. You don't need to worry about recharging the battery of an external device whenever you want to use it.

You only need two easy-to-use applications:
1) GPS Stone for iPhone: it is free, works beautifully with no advertisements.
2) GPSPhotoLinker: Free Mac application. Again, works perfectly with professional results.

Just use the iPhone app to track the GPS coordinates in background mode, you can keep it running for as many hours as you want, perhaps days! After finishing shooting your DSLR photos, just export the GPS coordinates from within the iPhone app to you by e-mail. When you import your photos on the computer. Just launch the GPSPhotoLinker that will quickly geotag all your RAW or JPG photos using the GPS file you received by e-mail. It works great without any hassle!

Ok, I am a Mac user with an iPhone. If you have a PC and/or another smartphone. I am pretty sure you can do the same, just need to look for it on the web.

I hope this is helpful in anyway.

Finally, these two apps are free. However, if you think this workflow works fine for your needs, please consider buying the pro iPhone app and/or donating some bucks to the Mac app developer.

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