Incorrect GPS coordinates

sarasphotos

Hello All,

I've noticed for quite some time that not all of my GPS data gets interpreted correctly. For example, in this gallery http://www.sarasphotos.de/PublicGalleries/BikingSWFrance2012/i-PsxHhVh photo 218 has "no map data" which is not true, photo 219 is set in Bavaria and not in southern France where it should be, photo 220 is in southern France but a couple hundred kilometers southeast of where it should be and photo 221 is correct. In Lightroom and in other programs clicking on the map data launches to the correct position on Google Maps.

What could be wrong here? Does anyone else have this problem?

Thanks,

Sara

sarasphotos

Well gee, since no one seemed to be interested in this problem I figured it out myself. It seems that I overloaded SMs brain when I uploaded multiple galleries at once. In uploading the multiple galleries the GPS coordinated for some of the photos got switched on import. I solved the problem by reloading the affected galleries one at a time.

So, GPS users, watch out when you opload from Lightroom - only send one gallery at a time.

Cheers,

Sara

leftquark

Hi Sara,
Thanks for bringing this to our attention and being so diligent to look into it! I'd like to make sure we understand so that we can file a bug report if it actually is a bug. Could you describe the steps you did that created the problem? Were you uploading to SmugMug using the Lightroom Publish plugin?

sarasphotos

Hi Aaron,

I upload to SM using Jeffrey Friedl's "Publish to SmugMug" plugin. ( http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodies/smugmug) When I publish more than one gallery at a time, i.e. press "publish now" before a gallery has finished publishing, there is a chance that the GPS coordinates from one photo get switched with another. That is to say that the GPS coordinates are not random or incorrectly interpreted - they are actually places where I took pictures, just switched within the database. And it doesn't happen always, just on say 4 pictures out of 300. The curious part is that when I download a falsely "gps'd" file from organizer, the photo's exif info contains the correct coordinates.

This happened again yesterday so I know that the problem is still current. I simply went back and published all of the galleries individually and that took care of the issue. And I'm using LR 5.6 on a Windows 64-bit system.

BTW, I'm glad to see you are now officially at SmugMug. Thanks for all of your customization work - I've used much of it!

Sunny greetings from Augsburg,

Sara

leftquark

sarasphotos wrote: »

I upload to SM using Jeffrey Friedl's "Publish to SmugMug" plugin. ( http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodies/smugmug)

Have you tried using the official SmugMug LR plugin? If it's an issue with the plugin then we only have control of our own LR plugin and not Jeffrey's, however ...

sarasphotos wrote: »

The curious part is that when I download a falsely "gps'd" file from organizer, the photo's exif info contains the correct coordinates.

This is really good information. It helps narrow down the scope of the problem you're having. Do you still have any examples of this behavior so that I can dig a bit deeper?

sarasphotos

ALthough I thought I caught everything and fixed it yesterday, here's a gallery that has problems. Here's a link to the gallery: http://www.sarasphotos.de/PublicGalleries/BikingSWFrance2012/i-G27Fd3x if you click on the info and location in this picture and zoom way out you will see the map shows 5 pictures in California, 11 in Germany and 330 in France.

In this gallery of 371 photos there should be 355 geoencoded pictures; 1 picture in Germany (the very first one of the bike in fromt of my apartment building, which contains the correct coordinates) and 354 in France. 16 of the photos in the gallery have no coordinates - they are route maps.

What we see on the above map are 346 geoencoded pictures, which means that 9 pictures got somehow stripped of their coordinates (or some other photo without gps coords is showing up on the map of France). Of the 346, 5 are shown to be in California (that was another trip), 10 are in different places is Germany, all of which I have visited and 3 of the 330 in France are in locations that I didn't visit on this particular trip, i.e. coordinates swapped with some other photo.

I downloaded two of the wrongly labeled photos (20120822_050_dmc-g3.jpg & 20120811_025_dmc-g1.jpg) and the gps coordinates (checked it in GeoHack) are correct for both of them.

My conclusion is that in the upload process the database makes a hiccup and two records are traded. Or the index key is messed up somehow.

Thanks again for the help. It would be nice to get to the root of this problem.

Cheers,
Sara

leftquark

sarasphotos wrote: »

Thanks again for the help. It would be nice to get to the root of this problem.

Hi Sara,
Thanks for the information. I was able to go in and confirm the issue you are exhibiting. I see that the map coordinates do not match the coordinates in the EXIF information. I was also able to re-upload the image using SmugMug's Web-based uploader and saw that the map location uploads to the correct location.

The issue is limited to only images uploaded using Jeff Friedl's Lightroom Plugin. Images uploaded using SmugMug's Lightroom Plugin or through our web-based uploader will correctly show their GPS coordinates on the map. I know that it may be frustrating to change your workflow but in the meantime would it be possible to use one of the other uploaders?