SL2 and GPS tagging

[Bernd B.]

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Go ahead and sue me or report me here to the admins. And if it makes you feel better: This girl is young, pretty - and does not need the money. We took photos in a professional studio, we know each other for years and are good friends. Get well! 

[hirohhhh]

1 minute ago, Bernd B. said:

Go ahead and sue me or report me here to the admins. And if it makes you feel better: This girl is young, pretty - and does not need the money. We took photos in a professional studio, we know each other for years and are good friends. Get well! 

The point isn't being sued, but the fact you don't realize what's wrong with your statement.

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[US00678]

This is what I've got after some ping-pong with the Fotos app support after I pointed out no gps data despite the satellite icon appears on the EVF of my SL2:

Thank you for the additional information.

We received similar feedback from other users and our developers work at some improvements for the geotagging function. Please be patient and wait for the update of Leica FOTOS.
 

Mit freundlichen Grüßen/Kind regards

Thomas Schmidt

Leica Camera AG
Customer Care / Leica FOTOS App Support
Am Leitz-Park 5 / 35578 Wetzlar/ Germany
+49 6441 2080 111 / app-support@leica-camera.com

[beewee]

Yeah, I reported the same a few days ago. I think they now realize people actually use this feature.

[Photoworks]

My SL2 are grabbing GPS location data from IOS device now. Not sure was was updated in the app, but both of the camera are working fine.

I save my profiles on SD, then full reset camera and connecter to FOTOapp.

after that I reloaded my profile setting and all is the same as before with GPS working.

[beewee]

11 hours ago, Photoworks said:

My SL2 are grabbing GPS location data from IOS device now. Not sure was was updated in the app, but both of the camera are working fine.

I save my profiles on SD, then full reset camera and connecter to FOTOapp.

after that I reloaded my profile setting and all is the same as before with GPS working.

I didn’t go so far as resetting my camera but updating my FOTOS app on iPadOS and iOS + SL2-S didn’t help. I was not able to get location with WiFi tethering and no location with BLE either. I tried both DNG and Jpeg separately as well. None of the permutations had location data in the metadata.

Edited March 18, 2021 by beewee

[beewee]

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Very interesting. So after resetting saving my user profiles, resetting the camera, and restoring profiles, then creating a new connection to my iPhone, this got geotagging working. Seems like either a camera reset and/or getting ride of the previous connection profile did the trick.

[beewee]

I did a bit more testing to see how reliable geotagging is after the camera falls asleep or if the phone is locked for an extended period of time.

Here’s my test setup:

• iPhone 12 Pro with iOS 14.4.1
• Leica FOTOS app v2.2.11
  • Privacy for location data set to ‘Always’ on iOS
  • Geolocation enabled
  • Running in the background
• SL2-S on FW 1.0.0
  • Had to reset camera and setup new connection to the phone after reset
  • Shooting DNG-only
  • Power savings: auto power off after 2min, auto display off after 30 sec

Initial observations are as follows:

• Every time I see the GPS icon on the top display and take a test photo, I can see GPS location in the metadata
• If the Leica FOTOS app is running in the foreground, I always get the GPS icon and location info in the metadata
• Under normal use, my phone has the screen turned off and is locked for an extended period, once the camera goes to sleep (2min), upon waking up camera the bluetooth icon takes a few seconds show up on the top display but sometimes the GPS icon never shows up or takes excessively long to show up (i.e. few minutes). There are two ways to resolve this:
  1. Unlocking the phone will enable GPS on the camera within 10-15 seconds and seems to be the fastest way to get the GPS icon on the top display
  2. Without unlocking the phone, having an Apple Watch paired to my iPhone and having a GPS enabled activity started (i.e. outdoor walk) forces the location services on iOS to run in the background. As long as the Apple Watch is connected to the iPhone, it will use the iPhone GPS receiver instead of the watch. Upon waking up the camera, the bluetooth icon takes a few seconds to show up. 10-30 seconds after the bluetooth icon shows up, the GPS icon will also pop up on the top display.

Edited March 18, 2021 by beewee

[MediaFotografie]

vor 5 Stunden schrieb beewee:

Initial observations are as follows:

• Every time I see the GPS icon on the top display and take a test photo, I can see GPS location in the metadata
• If the Leica FOTOS app is running in the foreground, I always get the GPS icon and location info in the metadata
• Under normal use, my phone has the screen turned off and is locked for an extended period, once the camera goes to sleep (2min), upon waking up camera the bluetooth icon takes a few seconds show up on the top display but sometimes the GPS icon never shows up or takes excessively long to show up (i.e. few minutes). There are two ways to resolve this:
  1. Unlocking the phone will enable GPS on the camera within 10-15 seconds and seems to be the fastest way to get the GPS icon on the top display
  2. Without unlocking the phone, having an Apple Watch paired to my iPhone and having a GPS enabled activity started (i.e. outdoor walk) forces the location services on iOS to run in the background. As long as the Apple Watch is connected to the iPhone, it will use the iPhone GPS receiver instead of the watch. Upon waking up the camera, the bluetooth icon takes a few seconds to show up. 10-30 seconds after the bluetooth icon shows up, the GPS icon will also pop up on the top display.

Hello beewee,

I would like to add my experience:

I observed these things exactly in the same way (but without Apple Watch, which I don't use) since the first beta test of Leica FOTOS with GPS over BT, maybe there es a small improvement, but it isn't a very useful solution (I used different iOS devices, iPhone X and 12 and an iPad, it's the same in every case). Leica nows this since the beta test but it isn't solved until now (FOTOS 2.2.11).

With the same Apple devices and Nikon's SnapBridge it works flawless.

[ausimo]

On 3/17/2021 at 10:35 AM, Photoworks said:

My SL2 are grabbing GPS location data from IOS device now. Not sure was was updated in the app, but both of the camera are working fine.

I save my profiles on SD, then full reset camera and connecter to FOTOapp.

after that I reloaded my profile setting and all is the same as before with GPS working.

Thank you! This trick helped me resolve the issue as well. I backed up my profile first before I went to reset camera:

Reset Camera Settings: Yes

Reset User Profiles: Yes (this is important)

Reset Wi-Fi and Bluetooth settings: Yes

Reset Image Counter: Yes

After the reset, reconnect to my iPhone and restored my profile. I was able to record the GPS info to the EXIF of the image when the GPS icon appears on the camera. 

[JulianHalliday]

On 11/24/2019 at 7:01 PM, hotshew said:

Unless Leica implements some changes, I'm going to resign myself to the SL2 being a GPS-less camera as nicci78 indicated. For GPS to be of value to me it needs to be on all the time and reliable...

Yup. I've followed all the connection steps, seen the blue light, kept the FOTOS app foreground on my phone, and have so far failed to create a single geo-tagged image -- not one photo from my SL2-S shows up on the map in Lightroom.

I'm eager to see what the impending firmware revision brings; functional GPS connectivity would be a critical upgrade so that I can once more use GPS data to correlate my movements with the photographs I make. 

Edit: I note the reset method of getting this to work, and will give that a go, with thanks to Photoworks and Ausimo for the information.

Edited March 31, 2021 by JulianHalliday

[beewee]

44 minutes ago, JulianHalliday said:

I note the reset method of getting this to work, and will give that a go, with thanks to Photoworks and Ausimo for the information.

I did everything short of a factory reset of the camera and nothing worked. It was only after resetting the camera that resolved the issue for me.

After this, the presence of the GPS icon does correlate with having location information in the image metadata.

[goldenbear]

On 3/31/2021 at 9:44 AM, beewee said:

I did everything short of a factory reset of the camera and nothing worked. It was only after resetting the camera that resolved the issue for me.

After this, the presence of the GPS icon does correlate with having location information in the image metadata.

Another confirmation that the function now works as intended on my SL2-S. Thanks!

[jrp]

3 hours ago, goldenbear said:

Another confirmation that the function now works as intended on my SL2-S. Thanks!

Did you have to do anything to get it to work?  What version of the app are you using?

[Bernd B.]

I always use the newest version of the app and the latest firmware for the Leica. For me, I get the connection between smartphone and Leica lasting for some 2 minutes with one or two gps-data written to the exif-data of the dng-files. Call me naive, but I just expect this stuff to function properly without all this resetting and pressing and hoping… 

[jrp]

There’s a whole forum dedicated to this app’s shortcomings. Key takeaway is that I wouldn’t buy a Leica smartphone until they start to show some evidence of having hired some competent software engineers. 

[Photoworks]

49 minutes ago, jrp said:

There’s a whole forum dedicated to this app’s shortcomings. Key takeaway is that I wouldn’t buy a Leica smartphone until they start to show some evidence of having hired some competent software engineers. 

you are in luck, here it is

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

[Bernd B.]

Nice. And it really gives you the chance to make and receive a call? Every time or only when, e.g., the Moon is in the Seventh House 
and Jupiter aligns with Mars? 

[JulianHalliday]

So. I

1. Exported profiles

2. Deleted FOTOS from my iPhone

3. Reset camera

4. Went through pairing sequence

5. Saw the blue light, got connected (though the sequence of pairing events remains inscrutable)

6. Allowed both phone and camera to go to sleep

7. Woke camera to find no connection (FOTOS: "Camera not connected.")

8. Woke phone, made FOTOS foreground

9. Got a restored connection

It appears that in order to have geotagging on my SL2-S photos, I shall have to go through a series of phone manipulations (confirm to connect, it appears) every single time I start up the camera. This is effectively useless for me; I'd hoped the FW 2 would help, but it does not seem to have been changed. There is something deeply counterintuitive about the whole process -- "Select CANCEL..." -- and I say this as someone who writes, among other things, software documentation for a living. I'm going to try some more real-world scenarios and see if I'm getting tagging -- at one point just now the phone was saying that the connection had failed, but the camera still showed the GPS logo on screen.

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[Bernd B.]

Julian, save time and nerves. I have a tracking-app running when taking photos I want with gps-data. Then the usual way: export the gps-file to lightroom, let lightroom do the work. This always works. The Leica-app still is not even able to keep a simple connection to the camera for remote-control.