FOTOS App 2.1 released (Geotagging)

[scott kirkpatrick]

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2 hours ago, iRandom said:

Total failure of geotagging for me today. I keep the Fotos app running on my iPhone at all times and it is often the only thing running. I took a few photos on three occasions this afternoon and not a single one has location info. The phone was with me the whole time. I even used the Fotos app to download each set along the way. You'd think that connecting the camera for downloading would have refreshed the geolocation - but then that would make sense and that is clearly beyond these engineers.

It wasn't until I killed the app and restarted it that I got a photo that supposedly has geolocation. So much for that message that says geotagging is disabled when you kill the app. It had already graciously disabled it long before that.

Earlier versions of the Fotos app would only add location info after you had made a remote connection.  I wonder if the two paths mess each other up now.

But, I can now keep the GPS icon appearing on the camera (SL2) 30 sec after the BT icon appears in both Android and iOS.  And the files have a location saved.  But the location is not at all accurate in iOS and is garbage (usually the top of my desk at home) in Android.  

So can some others check the accuracy of the locations you get when you get them, and come up with some ideas on when a location is passed from the phone to Fotos to the camera?  Ifirst check to be sure that there is a location (Fotos remote shows this.)  Then look the location up on a map and bring up the scale to check distance from street corners and buildings.  (Capture One lets me do this.  I go to the "info" panel, and click on a control close to the lat and lon, and it takes me to Google maps.)

 

[PhotoCruiser]

As i am again in quarantine for 2 weeks as i moved to Italy i cannot try in-depth the geotagging offset.
fact ist that it was not working on my Android 10 Galaxy S20 as Fotos aved the location, but old ones.

Test to do would be:

1° test the same with another cellphone
2° instead of switching off the camera let if sleep to see if the coordinates are right then.

Chris

[scott kirkpatrick]

Your situation is similar to a colleague who is working at EPFL in Lausanne while his family and fiancee are in Rome, starting to be able to go out... Until the pandemic came, he would go home at least every other weekend.

If you have access to sky from at least two locations 50 m apart, you can test the stuck location bug in Android with another phone.  My camera (SL2) has two sleep states -- display timeout, and overall timeout.  The overall timeout seems to differ from switch off only in that if you half-press the shutter, it wakes up.  I think setting "wakeup on BT request" makes switch off like timeout sleep, with the extra power cost that the BT radio stays on to listen for a wakeup.  That is probably worth understanding in more detail.

So far I see the same Android behavior that you report.  It only saves an initial geolocation.  In iOS, it gets wildly inaccurate locations, but it does keep them changing.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 27, 2020 by scott kirkpatrick

[T.J.]

What I don’t understand is I have no issues with my AirPods of Apple Watch maintaining a Bluetooth connection. 

[PhotoCruiser]

vor 4 Stunden schrieb T.J.:

What I don’t understand is I have no issues with my AirPods of Apple Watch maintaining a Bluetooth connection. 

Your Airpods are connected with BT because they receive music while Lthe camera need to receive position coordinates.
IOS and Android are engeneered to keep BT connection for streaming music, but probably not to stream coordinates in sleep mode.
Both OS can record the position when sleeping, but maybe the ölocation can't be requested thru BT?

I don't think the problem is that the bluetooth connection drop,
the problem seems to me that the position is not asked before every shot.
Even if the BT icon and a few sec later the satellite symbol litup showing connection on the Leica display,
the wrong coordinates can be recorded what basically means that the BT connection is established but the camera does/can not
request the actual position and store the one from before.

One test to verify that would be to check if the right position would be stored if the phone is unlocked when shooting a photo.
If this would be the case then the culprit would be that the camera can't request the position while the phone is locked/sleeping even
if the BT connection is established

However, a dropping bluetooth connection depend also on the device settings, particularly power saving features.
They may put BT to sleep for a while to save enegrgy, screen blackout and lock  also.
Different Iphones and IOS version probably influence as well
This would explain why some have problems and others don't

The above is valid also for the Leica Firmware, to save energy in sleep mode the Leica Blutooth is probably switched off and on constantly,
and this makes the connection instable.

Chris

[scott kirkpatrick]

I think that the camera asks for location after a shot, as it doesn't know when I will take a picture..  Watching the LED flash blue might be a clue to this.

and while the map on my phone updates quickly, my impression is that it starts the update only once it wakes up from sleep.  That's with a map app enabled and active.  I watch the blue dot and the direction estimator move around.  It is pretty fast if you want to find where you are on a map, but maybe not fast enough to respond to the camera saying that it just took a picture.  Providing an answer too quickly might be part of the problem.  Bytheway -- after each picture is taken, when the GPS icon is showing, there are three quick flashes of the red LED.  The blue is reserved for wifi transfers.

Edit -- I tried with "wakeup on BT" enabled in the camera, with essentially the same result.  I have succeeded in getting two different locations into the EXIF, but the second location only appeared after I had shut down both camera and phone outdoors.  This new location (outdoors) showed up once I was again indoors!   I don't think the developers need any more specific clues to know what part of the app to work on.

Fotos 2.1, M oto G7 Android 9, and the fotos app has permission to access location on the phone.  

 

Edited May 28, 2020 by scott kirkpatrick

[vedivv]

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Good to read about others' experience with this, and I feel a little relieved that I am not the only one suffering this geo tagging.  The most annoying part I found is that you have to connect wifi first and disconnected.  Why isn't there a simpler way to just connect by BT?  If cheap $15 BT headphones can stay connected, why is it so hard with the camera?  

My workaround has been to take a few pictures with my phone now and then just for geotagging.  Google photos simply guestimate location of other photos taken around the same time.

[scott kirkpatrick]

5 hours ago, vedivv said:

Good to read about others' experience with this, and I feel a little relieved that I am not the only one suffering this geo tagging.  The most annoying part I found is that you have to connect wifi first...

You don't have to do that once you have successfully connected one time wifi and registered the camera's information with Fotos.  After that, you only have to start the camera while Fotos is alive somewhere nearby.  That causes the GPS icon to appear on the camera (about 30 seconds later).  The problem is that the GPS icon means that something will appear in the picture's EXIF, but that something may be wildly inaccurate (in iOS)  or way out of date (in Android).  So it's beta, which for Leica means that it barely works, at least you don't often have to take the battery out of the camera to continue.

I'm being a bit harsh.  The older Fotos features, viewing pictures on the chip and running the camera remotely. have improved steadily in both versions.

[marcolinger]

This app simply doesn’t work. You cann discuss and test ass long as you want, no way. 

I had mail exchanges in german (so no risk of missunderstanding) with Thomas Schmidt from Leica in Wetzlar and I think the guys from customer support have also lost truth and faith in this application ... I still wait for a final answer after my last comment.

Really  not normal for german standards, particularely for such a traditional and prestigious brand.

[scott kirkpatrick]

Does anyone with contact in Wetzlar know who is designing, coding, and testing this app?  And where?

Which of the visible product managers (Stephan, Steffen, Maike, Jesko, etc...) takes responsibility for it?

[lykaman]

Whilst I appreciate that what Leica promise they should deliver, after I set up FOTOS and forgetting all the marketing crapp, as a transfer of images it works fine (for me) ~ sometimes it takes 2 goes to link up with the D-Lux 7 ~ once linked, it works ok.. L

[iRandom]

I did an outdoor test over the weekend between an iPhone 11 and Q2. I started the app on the phone as soon as I pulled the camera out. The first set of photos were taken over a period of 5-10 minutes. For the first 5 minutes or so there is no location info. It does eventually start appearing, but it disappears again between two photos that are back-to-back shutter releases.

I continued to take photos on and off over the next couple of hours. I kept the camera powered on most of this time. Some have location info. In most cases it was when I pulled out the phone and played with the app a bit in an attempt to get it to work.

The location info I did get is fairly accurate - at least for what I was doing. However, the consistency of the connection is anything but stable or even predictable. I enjoy having GPS info in photos from things like being at a theme park, zoo or walking around a city. Fotos certainly isn't up this task yet.

[jrp]

On 6/3/2020 at 1:48 PM, scott kirkpatrick said:

You don't have to do that once you have successfully connected one time wifi and registered the camera's information with Fotos. 
Earlier versions of the Fotos app would only add location info after you had made a remote connection.

I thought that I was running 2.1.1 with an SL2 + iPhone and the GPS on the SL2 only appears in the remote mode for me. And when I connect, it fires up the Wi-fi.  I don’t want to download pics from the camera (and it can’t do that anyway as I have two cards, as it reminds me). I could spend a lot of time reinstalling, tweaking various settings, etc, but it’s groping around in the dark...  

[graphlex]

Is geotagging supposed to work at all with the Visoflex 020 On an M10?

[scott kirkpatrick]

It should work.  You have to turn GPS tagging on in the M10.  And the VF020 has a pretty weak GPS receiver.  It takes a long time 2-5 minutes) to capture a signal and needs lots of satellites in view to succeed.

[Ray12]

Yes if the smartphones with much smaller bodies can have more options including pinpoint locations then why can't they put it inside the camera and save all of us from beating our heads against the wall ? I'm sure with such a big bodies like cameras there must be at least a room for this tiny feature. 

[iRandom]

19 hours ago, Ray12 said:

Yes if the smartphones with much smaller bodies can have more options including pinpoint locations then why can't they put it inside the camera and save all of us from beating our heads against the wall ? I'm sure with such a big bodies like cameras there must be at least a room for this tiny feature. 

It requires additional hardware and that means additional cost, power and antennas. Cell phones use a mix of GPS, cellular tower triangulation and Wi-Fi basestation info (in decreasing order of precision). Some cameras have GPS but it takes a while to get a lock and it isn't reliable indoors, cities or anywhere else that can block the signal. I'm not sure if any of the experimental bridge type cameras have cellular hardware. If they did I'm sure that your cell service provider would oblige you to pay for the additional service.

[Ray12]

You're right, it requires additional hardware but the thing is, smartphones have already bridged the gap and effectively killed the lower end compact cameras and now they're going after the zoom and higher resolution. I'm an old fashioned person and hate all the new tech despite its convenience and many many advantages but the truth is, when I compare the pictures taken on my proper cameras 10 years ago and today's smartphones, they're much better and clearer than the ones taken by cameras. So camera manufacturers really have to up their game to justify for us to have a separate device. And the way technology is changing, it won't be long before they'll kill the mid range bridge cameres etc too

[scott kirkpatrick]

Of course if GPS and assisted localization (as the phones do with or without a Sim chip) can be fit inside a cellphone, then it can easily fit into a camera.  The hardware isn't the issue.  That is purchased from specialty companies.  It is the software that is incredibly hard to write, and to keep up with local regulations, expensive to license in each country where you want to sell your product, and tricky to keep it from draining your batteries. I think that is why Leica and most other companies are anxious to let localization be a problem that the phone companies can solve for them.  Of course, they are finding that managing the connection, even with low energy BlueTooth is not as simple and reliable as it first seemed, so it will take a while for this all to work effortlessly.

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[khatch]

Color me confused...

So at this point, are Q/Q2 owners consistently finding success in getting GPS location data into their EXIF files or not?  I’ve been tracking this issue for...years...and it still seems rather...unresolved.