SL2 and GPS tagging

[skovbo13]

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I am surprised the HG-SCL6 Handgrip doesn't offer built-in GPS.

At that price-point it should.

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The Leica Q3 is available for pre-order at B&H Photo Video and Adorama

[beewee]

My guess about the flakey GPS feature through Fotos at least on the iOS side is that it has something to do with iOS’s power savings mechanism that Leica have zero control over since that’s in Apple’s domain. iOS is notorious for suspending Apps and power hungry features like GPS while the phone is locked. That doesn’t excuse Leica for announcing a feature that doesn’t work and for which they cannot fix.

It’s one thing to not announce GPS via Fotos on the SL2 at launch and them come out with a ‘Beta’ GPS feature later. I don’t think we’d complain about a half baked geotagging feature that is marketed as a ‘bonus’ but not fully working.

It’s totally different to announce the GPS via Fotos on the SL2 at launch and have an unstable and poorly implemented solution 14 months after launch and not communicate to customer about a fix or work around. By now, if they know that GPS via Fotos is not a viable solution, they could have white labelled a portable GPS receiver with a BLE connection that can be sold as an accessory and allow the SL2 to connect to the the GPS receiver.

[beewee]

For those that need geotagging, if you’re using Lightroom, you can use a third party GPS receiver like a Garmin and log a GPX file and then import that into Lightroom to geotag your photos after the fact. It’s not quite as streamlined as having GPS location embedded into the EXIF data but it’s better than nothing,

[SrMi]

20 minutes ago, beewee said:

For those that need geotagging, if you’re using Lightroom, you can use a third party GPS receiver like a Garmin and log a GPX file and then import that into Lightroom to geotag your photos after the fact. It’s not quite as streamlined as having GPS location embedded into the EXIF data but it’s better than nothing,

Either that or use an app on the phone.  It is essential to synchronize the clock, which can be done with the Fotos app.

[Sjz]

Or sync the time on your phone and camera and use a gps photo tracker app. Then add the co-ordinates to the exif based on time stamp of the photo when blended on your computer.

I used to do that years ago, however I stopped after I had proven to myself it worked and then asked myself ‘why bother?’

I can’t remember the exact one I used however a quick look through the Apple Store shows there are quite a few.  

[Photoworks]

2 hours ago, Sjz said:

Or sync the time on your phone and camera and use a gps photo tracker app. Then add the co-ordinates to the exif based on time stamp of the photo when blended on your computer.

I used to do that years ago, however I stopped after I had proven to myself it worked and then asked myself ‘why bother?’

I can’t remember the exact one I used however a quick look through the Apple Store shows there are quite a few.  

I have used a simple Garmin Fenix 2 watch to track all day, export the data to computer and GPS sync in photo mechanic.

Alternately the iPhone app Geotag Photos Pro 2 does that too.

[Brian Puccio]

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2 hours ago, Sjz said:

I used to do that years ago, however I stopped after I had proven to myself it worked and then asked myself ‘why bother?’

It’s useful if you are a landscape person and go hiking and a week or a decade later wonder “what park was this in? or what country even?”.

I guess it would be similarly useful if you were into street photography and months or years later forgot the city you were in at the time.

I guess the analog equivalent would be writing on the back of a 4x6 “Vancouver ‘97” or “Fern Canyon 2017”.

[MediaFotografie]

vor 14 Stunden schrieb beewee:

My guess about the flakey GPS feature through Fotos at least on the iOS side is that it has something to do with iOS’s power savings mechanism that Leica have zero control over since that’s in Apple’s domain. iOS is notorious for suspending Apps and power hungry features like GPS while the phone is locked. That doesn’t excuse Leica for announcing a feature that doesn’t work and for which they cannot fix.

yes, I'm supposing iOS power saving machanism as an important part of the problem too - but others like Nikon solved all these problems completely.

[Photoworks]

2 hours ago, MediaFotografie said:

yes, I'm supposing iOS power saving machanism as an important part of the problem too - but others like Nikon solved all these problems completely.

Not sure that is the case. The Leica q2 tags the GPS data well. the SL2 icon shows up and does not record the GPS location.

I did many test with the iOS app. there is a problem somewhere.

[BernardC]

22 hours ago, beewee said:

My guess about the flakey GPS feature through Fotos at least on the iOS side is that it has something to do with iOS’s power savings mechanism that Leica have zero control over since that’s in Apple’s domain.

Is this iOS-only, or do Android users have the same problems with GPS?

Some of Leica's earlier cameras have built-in GPS receivers, like my SL and S-006. I suppose it makes sense to offload that function to your phone, but then you have to deal with dozens of different interfaces and revisions. It could be that Apple and/or Google decided to restrict GPS position reports to "approved" hardware only.

[Simone_DF]

the iOS app for Sony works really well for geotagging, always connected to the camera, all my photos are geotagged. When I turn off the camera, I get an app notification that the camera connection has been disconnected. Turning on the camera, it reconnects automatically, so this is not a problem on Apple's side.

[beewee]

44 minutes ago, Simone_DF said:

the iOS app for Sony works really well for geotagging, always connected to the camera, all my photos are geotagged. When I turn off the camera, I get an app notification that the camera connection has been disconnected. Turning on the camera, it reconnects automatically, so this is not a problem on Apple's side.

That’s really good to know. It gives me hope that the Fotos app can be fixed once Leica gets its act together.

[Photoworks]

you should all report the problem to Leica inside the app. Maybe they don't even know that it is an issue

[Bernd B.]

What makes you guess we did not already? I am corresponding regularly with an engineer working at Leica in Wetzlar. He is giving me little hope... 

[Photoworks]

I just tested Android phone and GPS didn't work on SL2

[beewee]

After some testing, I think I managed to get the geotagging to work somewhat reliably on iOS 14.4, FOTOS v2.2.9 and the SL2-S (FW 1.0.0)

What I had to do was the following:

1. Install iOS Settings > Privacy > Location Services > Leica FOTOS and set allow location access to Always and enable Precise Location
2. Enable bluetooth on the camera and iPhone (12 Pro in my case)
3. Connect camera to FOTOS App
4. In Fotos App, go to Settings, then press the Disconnect button to disconnect the WiFi connection between the phone and the camera

Note: Do not fully kill the FOTOS App by swiping up from the bottom edge of the screen to the app ‘cards’ view and then swiping the FOTOS app to kill it. This will disable geotagging.

It seems steps 1 and 4 were the key but not obvious. Previously, I tried without performing step 4 and I would lose Geotagging capability if I close the FOTOS app. I also tried to set the iOS Location Services permissions to only While Using the App and this caused the camera to not be able to get geotagging information when the phone was locked.

By doing the above, I was able to keep the iPhone screen locked/off and the camera was still able to get the GPS icon, indicating that it had geotagging capability. With the phone screen locked, I was able to get geotagging on the camera. Even after allowing the camera to go to ‘sleep’ and shut off by itself, when I pressed the shutter button to wake the camera, it would automatically re-establish the BLE connection to the phone and get geotagging data.

In general, I found that after waking up the camera, it took about 4 seconds for the camera to re-establish the bluetooth connection. It took an additional ~10 seconds before the camera was able to get geotagging information from the phone.

[SrMi]

4 minutes ago, beewee said:

After some testing, I think I managed to get the geotagging to work somewhat reliably on iOS 14.4, FOTOS v2.2.9 and the SL2-S (FW 1.0.0)

What I had to do was the following:

1. Install iOS Settings > Privacy > Location Services > Leica FOTOS and set allow location access to Always and enable Precise Location
2. Enable bluetooth on the camera and iPhone (12 Pro in my case)
3. Connect camera to FOTOS App
4. In Fotos App, go to Settings, then press the Disconnect button to disconnect the WiFi connection between the phone and the camera

Note: Do not fully kill the FOTOS App by swiping up from the bottom edge of the screen to the app ‘cards’ view and then swiping the FOTOS app to kill it. This will disable geotagging.

It seems steps 1 and 4 were the key but not obvious. Previously, I tried without performing step 4 and I would lose Geotagging capability if I close the FOTOS app. I also tried to set the iOS Location Services permissions to only While Using the App and this caused the camera to not be able to get geotagging information when the phone was locked.

By doing the above, I was able to keep the iPhone screen locked/off and the camera was still able to get the GPS icon, indicating that it had geotagging capability. With the phone screen locked, I was able to get geotagging on the camera. Even after allowing the camera to go to ‘sleep’ and shut off by itself, when I pressed the shutter button to wake the camera, it would automatically re-establish the BLE connection to the phone and get geotagging data.

In general, I found that after waking up the camera, it took about 4 seconds for the camera to re-establish the bluetooth connection. It took an additional ~10 seconds before the camera was able to get geotagging information from the phone.

Can you confirm that your photos have GPS data? The icon itself is not a reliable sign.

[scott kirkpatrick]

2.2.9!  Android hasn't updated since last December.

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Hallo,

Look here: Leica L-Mount

[beewee]

11 minutes ago, SrMi said:

Can you confirm that your photos have GPS data? The icon itself is not a reliable sign.

Doh. I don’t see any location data in the EXIF data.

[beewee]

It seems to me that FOTOS is actually getting geolocation data based on the iOS location service indicator. At least the when the app is running in the background, iOS Location Services indicate that Leica FOTOS is using the location service API. So the problem is either in the BLE communication with the camera or the camera’s ability to write location data to the EXIF fields in the image file.

On a related note, it seems the bluetooth icon on the camera is not very meaningful. If it only indicates that the bluetooth radio is enabled on the camera itself but does not indicate whether there is any communication between the camera and the FOTOS app. Even when I turned off bluetooth on both my phone and iPad, the camera would still show the bluetooth icon when it turns on.

The GPS icon on the other hand is a bit harder to decipher. If I first disable location services for the FOTOS app and then turn on the camera and allow it to connect to the FOTOS app, the camera will not show the GPS icon. However, the moment I turn enable location services on the FOTOS app, the GPS icon will pop up on the camera and the iOS location services page wil show that the FOTOS app is using iOS location services. Next, if I then disable location services again for FOTOS, the camera GPS icon does not go away. It only goes away after the camera goes to sleep and when I wake up, it no longer appears.