Geotagging - Long and Lat formats?

cycleman · October 8, 2008

I'm trying to enter geotag/map info. I use a Garmin unit, and these are the coordinates Garmin mapsource provides: N48 50.722 E2 20.390 (e.g. for the Jardin de Luxembourg). I don't know which of these is longtitude and which is latitude. do I have to convert them to something else in order to map them for SMug? thanks.

dick louderman

digismile · October 8, 2008

hi Dick,

The first is the latitude: N48 50.722 and the second is the longitude: E2 20.390. If you are going to enter it in Smugmug manually (under "Edit Geography") you need to convert these co-ordinates to decimal by clicking on the link Wanna convert?.

You would enter each co-ordinate, one at a time, on the second input line where you see a box for Degrees and Minutes.M. The trick is that you don't enter the N for North or E for east. When you are North of the equator, the the first number that you enter in the Degrees box (in this case 48) is entered as a positive number. If the latitude was south of the equator (i.e., your Garmin said S48 50.722) you would enter it as a negative number (-48).

Longitude has a similar trick for entering. When the longitude is East of the Prime Meridian (indicated as E and some number), the degrees are entered as positive. If your co-ordinate indicates W xx, this means you are west of the P.M. and you would enter the number as negative.

So for your example, you would enter 48 in the degrees box, and 50.722 in the Minutes.M box and hit convert. You then see the converted number below, oposite the D.d label. So for the latitiude, you should see 48.84536666670000. Now you do the same for the longitude. You would type 2 into the Degrees box and 20.390 in the Minutes.M box and click on convert. Your result should be 2.33983333333333 for the longitude.

So after entering all this, you now have a picture geotagged in Smugmug. Easy? Not really

. You have many options to automate this process for whole batches of photos.

I use a Garmin 60CSx while photographing and simply let it keep a track log while I walk around. The garmin will save the Lat/Long automatically at a preset time interval (which you can set). I'm not sure what the default is, but I've never had to change it.

When I get home, I connect my Garmin, open MapSource to download the Track created (you have to save it with a date on your Garmin) and save the track as a .gpx file (you will see it as one of the options in the pulldown).

Then I use a great little program called GeoSetter which can be found here. I can then use my track file to update a batch of photos that I have taken during the same time as the recorded track. You just have to make sure that your GPS time and your camera time are reasonably close (the software can even adjust for a signficant difference in time). This means you can geocode literally hundreds of photos in just a couple of minutes. And even if you don't have a track file from your Garmin, the software will left you enter a name into a Google Maps dialog box and then transfer a Lat/Long to a photo or group of photos. It really is a slick program. And it's Freeware too

(although the author will gratefully accept donations). So now when you upload to Smugmug, the Geotag is already there. BTW, the program works just fine with RAW files (it updates an existing sidecar file or creates a new one).

This is a windows program. If you are a Mac person, you will need to google GPS software on dgrin.com. There are many posts about how to automate the geocoding.

HTH,

cycleman · October 10, 2008

digismile wrote:

hi Dick,

The first is the latitude: N48 50.722 and the second is the longitude: E2 20.390. If you are going to enter it in Smugmug manually (under "Edit Geography") you need to convert these co-ordinates to decimal by clicking on the link Wanna convert?.

thanks much for all this detailed info. it's really helpful.

I think I have the same garmin unit that you do. it's very helpful. take care.

dick

Geotagging - Long and Lat formats?

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