On 5/31/07, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On the ID thing, what I would really like one day would be a bluetooth-enabled GPS that could sit in my backpack not doing much, but everytime I took a photo, could sync its satellites and provide the GPS coordinates back to the camera. That would be really nifty for travel photography, and kill two birds with one stone for a lot of wikipedia articles: a photo and the exact GPS location of the subject (providing you're not too far from it when you shoot).
While that's not quite available yet, we're pretty close. There are carryable GPS thingies that log their location regularly to an internal buffer that you can download to your computer. Assuming your camera's set to the right time or near enough, there are applications that can take this log and apply the logged location at the appropriate time to each photograph you took. Google for 'Geotagging', I think.
Pretty soon, I suspect, cameras will begin to carry onboard GPS devices.
If you have serious money to spend, Canon's upcoming EOS-1D Mk III professional camera (about a US$3500 purchase) can be fitted with a device called the WFT-E2A which is primarily a wireless file transmitter (thus the title) using 802.11G wireless specifications but also permits the connection of an external GPS device via USB. I imagine that news organizations and other professional users might find that invaluable.
I suspect the next generation after that, in 2 years or so, will have an inbuilt wireless transceiver and possibly even built-in GPS.
-Matt