Cameras and Camcorders that work with GPS

[+GOT GPS?]

If you know of any camcorders/cameras, that work with GPS units, post what you know here, and if they are Bluetooth, or hook up via cable, also if they are High Definiton or Standard Def.

 

I do have a Sony HDR-XR500v that has built-in GPS but it has no Time-Lapse function, but the Canons have Time Lapse, but I don't know if they hook up to GPS in some way.

 

I am into High Definition Camcorders, like the above Sony, but they removed the Interval Time Record for making Time-lapse videos, when they went to High Def camcorders.

 

Would be interesting if I could somehow have High Def, GPS, and Time-lapse in one unit.

 

Is there some way to connect a GPS to a High Definition Canon Camcorder?

[+ecanderson]

Problem #1 would be finding a GPS with Bluetooth unless it's just a puck. If that's what you mean, then there's hope, but I haven't seen the matching camera yet.

 

Problem #2 is that neither cameras, nor GPS units in NMEA mode, are USB hosts, so there's no one to initiate the conversation -- and neither industry has adopted the USB2GO standard.

 

At best you'd want to find an integrated solution since the industry doesn't seem to be picking up on the need for interoperability. Problem for you will be that everything out there at the moment seems to be targeted at still cameras -- although those often shoot video at some resolution or another.

 

Examples: Nikon's GP-1 (or Satechi's JC-36, also for Nikon), Sony's GPS-CS3KA and the like. Some of the older eTrex series that do serial NMEA might even work with the MC-35 cable (from Nikon) directly.

[+ecanderson]

Backing up a second ... you're trying to do High Def time lapse? Do you mean you're trying to do stills with the video camera? Given the way video compression works, I think I can understand why they dropped that feature from those cameras. Why not the time lapse feature on a good still camera set for a similar resolution/definition? THAT we can fix using tools like the above.

[+Entropy512]

The problem is that, except for maybe as an overlay on the image data itself, it is not possible in most video formats recorded by camcorders to store metadata about video clips. (AVCHD does have some limited metadata support in the file structure, but probably has no provisions for geolocation metadata.)

 

If you're doing timelapse, then you just need to geotag the stills. Actually you only need to geotag one still. For that purpose, any camera that saves the "Date Taken" EXIF field (basically any digital camera...) is all you need. Take your pictures, save a GPS log at the same time, then correlate the images to the GPS tracklog in post. If you're doing timelapse photography, doing the postprocessing step of correlating images to a GPS track is going to be nothing compared to the rest of your workflow. (It takes me about 30 seconds to geotag an entire directory of images in digiKam, gpicsync and GeoSetter should be similarly efficient.)

[Dr Jeckyl and Mr Hide]

Sort of a solution for cameras with SDHC slots:

 

http://www.eye.fi/

 

A SD card with WiFi, which "kinda" geotags your photos. I say "kinda" because it relies on WiFi to Geotag so it would tag where WiFI exists, but not the rest of the time. Which makes that part of it fairly useless to me.

 

But it's a neat idea and the card's not very expensive. You can get an 8 gig SDHC for $100.

 

In fact for a while Google was giving out the 2 gig versions of the card if you signed up for extra storage space. Not sure if they still do.