J.D. Hodges

As you may have already read in my mini-review, I’ve been having fun playing with my mother-in-law’s snazzy new camera, the Canon Powershot SX230 HS.

I knew the SX230 had GPS capabilities built into it, and I actually expected it to be storing GPS data for all the photos I was taking. However, I didn’t see any of the GPS coordinated in the EXIF JPEG data, leading me to believe that the feature wasn’t “on”. So I had a look through the camera’s menus and this morning I enabled the GPS feature on the SX230. The camera quickly locked onto the GPS signals (less than 20 seconds) and then I took the following photo:

Of course what’s super-cool about this camera is that it embeds the GPS data into the photo, using industry standard EXIF data. This way, without any extra effort on your part, you can have a record of where all your photos were taken! This is generally referred to as “geotagging” your photos.

If your software supports reading the EXIF data, then you can also display this info for yourself or others. See the example below:

Here is the EXIF data, as output by the EXIF Viewer FireFox plugin

First, the GPS data:

EXIF GPS IFD

• GPS Version ID = 0x02,0x03,0x00,0x00
• GPS Latitude Reference = N
• GPS Latitude = 37/1,9/1,26255/1000 [degrees, minutes, seconds] ===> 37° 9′ 26.255″ == 37.157293°
• GPS Longitude Reference = W
• GPS Longitude = 93/1,13/1,38915/1000 [degrees, minutes, seconds] ===> 93° 13′ 38.915″ == 93.227476°
• Links to online mapping websites:
  • Google™ Maps
    
  • Yahoo!® Maps
  • MSN® Maps & Directions
  • Mapquest®
  • Open KML data with Google™ Earth
  • Save KML data to file
  • Save KML data to file and open with Google™ Earth
• GPS Altitude Reference = sea level reference (negative value)
• GPS Altitude = 41247/100 m ===> 412.47 m
• GPS Time Stamp / UTC Time = 14/1,50/1,1000/1000 [hours, minutes, seconds] ===> 14h 50m 1s
• GPS Status = measurement in progress
• GPS Map Datum = WGS-84
• GPS Date Stamp = 2011:05:05 UTC

Now all the rest of the EXIF data:

<?xpacket begin='' id='W5M0MpCehiHzreSzNTczkc9d'?><x:xmpmeta xmlns:x="adobe:ns:meta/"><rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"><rdf:Description rdf:about="" xmlns:xmp="http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/"><xmp:Rating>0</xmp:Rating></rdf:Description></rdf:RDF></x:xmpmeta>

Conclusion

I hope this post was helpful in seeing how the SX230 combines an integrated GPS receiver with EXIF data to automatically geotag your photos for you! Please write to me below if you have any questions or comments about the SX230 or its cool GPS feature. 🙂