Leica Q with GPS

[leicapages]

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A few months ago I was handling the Leica Q in a shop and was about to actually get it, until I realized it had no GPS. Since the camera was meant for landscape photography (making perfect use of its 28mm lens), that was actually a dealbreaker to me as I prefer to have the GPS data stored in such images. If Leica adds the GPS function to the camera, I may jump for it as it has most of the features I would otherwise wish for in a compact and easily portable size

 

Am I alone in this?

 

Pascal

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I have thought so too, for a while. I then realized that relying on the in-camera GPS had severe drawbacks. The camera takes time to establish its location. The GPS will fail when there is no good clear signal such as in cities, the mountains or even a forest. The GPS draws power. You can not easily access the GPS data for an entire outing. 

 

I now use an external device for tracking the trip, such as my phone or a cheapish GPS device. I then use any of the free or cheap software products available to tag the pictures when I'm back at the desk and store both the gpx track and an image of the map with the track and the most important points of interest in the same directory with the pictures.

 

It has, of course, the disadvantage that I have to think of tagging the pictures and that I have to spend about two minutes or so for doing that. It has the advantage that the tagging works exactly the same for all pictures. It also works consistently for pictures taken with all digital cameras I or my family happened to use at one particular outing.

[Tom.]

It's not a deal breaker for me (as I own one). But it should have GPS, especially at this price tag. A GPS receiver (just the hardware) shouldn't cost more than a few bucks for Leica.

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Afterthought: A great many pictures taken with my M seem to have been taken to the west of Africa in the big drink. Seeing that the software development department at Leica has still some learning to do, I think that using a solution not built into the camera might be more robust.

[Leica Guy]

I take the occasional companion photo with an iPhone and it perfectly stores the GPS location. I can then add that to my Q photos in LR if I want it a part of the metadata.

[leicapages]

Afterthought: A great many pictures taken with my M seem to have been taken to the west of Africa in the big drink. Seeing that the software development department at Leica has still some learning to do, I think that using a solution not built into the camera might be more robust.

Strange. At least the GPS data with the Leica S seem to be more or less accurate.

[marchyman]

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Afterthought: A great many pictures taken with my M seem to have been taken to the west of Africa in the big drink. 

 

 

Leica does the wrong thing, IMHO, with respect to storing GPS metadata.   Other vendors leave the GPS specific metadata out of the image file if there is no valid GPS info to store.   Leica adds GPS metadata with a 0 latitude 0 longitude, but seems to leave out the N/S and E/W reference.   Software that doesn't know about this Leica quirk assume the 0/0 is correct and place the image at 0/0 -- off the west coast of Africa.

 

Edit: I think it is the M that does that, not the Q.

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Leica does the wrong thing, IMHO, with respect to storing GPS metadata.   Other vendors leave the GPS specific metadata out of the image file if there is no valid GPS info to store.   Leica adds GPS metadata with a 0 latitude 0 longitude, but seems to leave out the N/S and E/W reference.   Software that doesn't know about this Leica quirk assume the 0/0 is correct and place the image at 0/0 -- off the west coast of Africa.

 

Edit: I think it is the M that does that, not the Q.

It's indeed the M as I don't have a Q. That kind of software error was one of the causes of the so called "millenium problem". One would have hoped that this was known as a poor technique by now.

[Bjiork]

Perhaps in the next firmware update they will add something like fuji. You connect your camera to smartphone and the camera uses the gps info from the smartphone.

[jlindstrom]

To have a Leica camera with built-in gps & always connected to your smartphone is an easy problem to solve. Enter the P9 [emoji23][emoji123]

 

Leica has a mixed history with gps.. think of T, which had it working through evf. Then think of X typ113 using the same evf - they never got it working in firmware, even though it was a documented feature in their owners manual & had configurarion item in the camera menu.

 

Thus I'd be looking for 3rd party gps solutions.

 

 

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