 Impressive GPS for my Nikon D90 |
| Review Date: March 18, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Dennis A. Meek, Everett, WA USA |
I had originally thought of buying the Nikon GPS for my D90 but when I was trying to order one they weren't in stock yet. What few reviews I read on the Nikon unit only gave them middle of the road reviews. I had read early about the JOBO PhotoGPS and the reviews were great as they are here on Amazon.
It acquires a fix very fast. I would say in less than 1 second. It has even gotten a fix in my house. Reviewers post that their unit fits loosely on their camera's hotshoe. But I have found mine to have a very snug fit where it will not come off the camera until I remove it. The software is easy to use to tag your photo's.
I have read that some people find it less than satisfactory as these GPS units don't show direction. My hand held Garmin unit won't show direction either if I'm not moving. And I don't see any need to know what direction the camera was pointing in in a photo. But this unit captures latitude, longitude and altitude. The info says it is accurate within 10 meters, which is normal for any GPS, but I have found it accurate within several feet.
I'm very pleased with the JOBO PhotoGPS and find it very accurate and very easy to use. |
Great value, works well
|
| Review Date: April 8, 2009 |
| Reviewer: DigitalMan, Denver, CO |
| I bought this after alot of research of geo-tagging solutions. I would have preferred to have a solution that wrote directly to the XMP file but those solutions were twice the price and required a cable between the logger and the camera (not very elegant, although others out there swear by those solutions). At this price point this unit works very well. It syncs to the satellites quickly and is very accurate. Yes, it does add an extra step to your import and post processing workflow but it is not terribly time consuming and doesn't really seem to slow me down. I found this to be a very good value compromise and I highly recommend this unit. |
Very fast, accurate and more
|
| Review Date: May 17, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Scott Graudin, Bremerton, WA USA |
I have a Nikon D90 and purchased a GP-1 to do the geotagging. The GP-1 was terrible. It could take more than 30 seconds to get a fix and worse yet was that very often it would not get a signal. I found myself spending a lot of time just waiting. Another thing that I did not like was the cable that connects the GPS unit to the camera is suseptible to being moved in the normal course of handling the camera and this movement is then transferred to the connector in the camera, potentially creating a loose conection over time.
The JOBO, on the other hand has not yet failed to get a signal. Better still is that there is no waiting. Just shoot as normal and the JOBO wakes up and captures the GPS coordinates and logs them into the unit. The connection on the D90 is snug enough to hold it into place with being too snug.
There is no need to syncronize the clock on your camera to the JOBO because the GPS coordinates are paired to your photos by the time interval between shots... and it works well.
Sidecar (.xmp) files are created during the matching process and additional IPTC information is downloaded on street address, city, state and country. Nearby points of interest are also recorded. If you use Adobe Lightroom 2 then you have some choices that are rather nice. You can delete the .xmp after you have imported your photos into your catalog or you can keep them. Apparenty the data in the .xmp file is written into the .lrcat file. If you keep them then you'lll be albe to see the GPS and related IPTC information in the RAW file. If you delete them then you will not see that information in the RAW but, with either choice, the GPS and IPTC information gets written into the jpg files.
Lightroom has many features and one that I find very convenient is the export presets. I direct Lr2 to rename the file to the IPTC address keywords plus a sequential number. So after processing the RAW files and as I export them to .jpg, they get renamed from _DSC0001.nef to, for example, "Belfair State Park 001.jpg".
I highly recommend the JOBO over the GP-1 anyday and to anyone. |
Very Good but not Great
|
| Review Date: January 23, 2009 |
| Reviewer: RS Blum, California, USA |
The GPS in this unit is fast and accurate, which is the primary reason you pay twice what other units cost. It typically takes only a second for the little green light to shine, indicating a lock when outdoors. It has a "hint" button that you can press before entering a building. This will be used if a satellite lock is impossible.
The software supplied with the unit works pretty well. It not only tags the long and lat, it does altitude also. And it will also insert points of interest into your file. It also supports RAW, which is one of the reasons I bought it, by creating XMP sidecar files that Adobe products can use. There are two problems with this, though. The first, and the worst, is that it creates new XMP files; it doesn't insert the geotag data into existing files. That means that after downloading with the Adobe downloader, you have to put off looking at your photos until running the JOBO PhotoGPS program. If you use Bridge or ACR first, your changes are wiped out. This is a major oversight. The next big problem is you MUST have an Internet connection to run the software. It does make sense, because the PhotoGPS program has to query an online database for POI info. However, you cannot disable this. This mean that if you are on safari, etc., you can neither download your GPS data or work with your images. The capacity of the unit is 1024 captures, which means about two days of heavy shooting. It is doubly annoying that the database doesn't include Chile, the place I bought the GPS to work in. And even so, I must be online to geotag. (The database does include the USA, and the database is quite thorough there.)
Lacks: (1) No online manuals. I had to wait to get the product to see how it actually worked. And once I installed the program, it gave me a link to the manual which is on the JOBO website. It should be freely available. (2) No list of areas covered by the data base. (3) The unit's flash drive isn't visible. Again, you must be online for the software to geotag.
Serious problem: As another reviewer said, though the unit will fit cameras with a hot shoe (I have a 5D Mark II), it is quite loose. Sling the camera over your shoulder and the unit goes flying. I've resorted to tape. JOBO should have put some rubber on the foot of the unit or come up with some other securing measure. My unit has already fallen about 5 times, gotten lost in the car twice, and broken open once. Happily, it snapped together.
Good point: When download completes, there will be a KLM file in your tagged directory. You can use this file, so I'm told, with GPS Babel and other programs to do geotagging outside of the supplied software.
Would I recommend it? Yes, with cavets. |
Jobo PhotoGPS Finally Released
|
| Review Date: January 8, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Ina Bechhoefer, |
I have been waiting for this device for the last 2 years since it was announced at PMA 07.
In the meantime, I tried 3 other GPS taggers. None were satisfactory. I received shipment of mine last week from B&H. It was worth the wait.
There is only a second or two lag time for the GPS to fire. Sometimes it took as much as 15 minutes for other GPS devices to cold start a location.
The process is straightforward. Mount the PhotoGPS on the hotshoe. Take pictures. Download photos. Open the PhotoGPS software. Connect the GPS device via USB. Download data from the GPS. Load the photos into the software. Automatically tag the photos. Raw photos are saved to .XMP sidecar and JPEGs are written directly to the File. Tag accuracy is good. Accuracy is stated as w/in 50 meters. I tested the files in downtown Manhattan last week and the accuracy was usually much better -- dead-on in a large majority of the cases. Edits can be made to the tags.
I use Adobe Lightroom to download my photos. Thus, I have to remember to have Lightroom Read the Metadata from the files to update the Lightroom data and Longitude, Latitude, Altitude, Location, City, State, and Country data are all automatically tagged. Lightroom allows one to see the GPS data on a Google Map by clicking on the coordinates. Any retagging can be done with a free Lightroom plug-in (Geoencode) by jeffrey Freidl. He also has a Proximity Search plug-in for Lightroom. See http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodies
I found 2 minor problems:
1. The device fits loosely in the hotshoe of both my Canon EOS D40 and my Canon G10. I solved the problem by putting some glue on the side rims outside the slider and let it dry. This gives the hotshoe connector a bit of grab, so the GPS device no longer slips off.
2. The internal flash is not triggered when the flash is utilized, so the GPS device must be removed in order to use the internal flash. If you take a picture before or after removing the device, the software will interpolate the gps coordinates. Also there is a GeoHint button to help assist tagging when inside or when the device is off.
I would give the Jobo PhtoGPS a "5" rating if one did not have to remove the device to use the flash. |
|
No video reviews found for this product.
Amazon.com: Bestsellers
No comments yet.