GPS ISSUE

[Old Sarge]

I hate not being able to figure things out myself but I have an issue which has defeated me. I have always liked using a GPS. I was an early adopter of the old Garmin Street Pilot for my vehicle. I had an off brand GPS for use with my camera that required proprietary software to sync with my files. Had (have) a Canon GP-E2 I used with my 7D. With my 7DII I no longer needed the GP-E2. Then I got my R7 and I used Canon Connect and my iPhone to record locations. So with these years of experience I really hate not being able to solve my current issue.

I recently noticed that I wasn't getting the GPS information on my metadata or on my photos I transfer to my iPhone. When I turn my camera on the GPS marker on the R7 information screen stops blinking indicating it is connected. But when I take a picture there is still no location information in the metadata or the iPhone information when transfer a photo there. I have checked every setting I can think of but everything seems to be set properly....unless I changed something and have forgotten it (always possible at 82). Is there some esoteric setting I'm forgetting? It seemed to just happen suddenly.

Thanks for any help you can offer.

 

[Old Sarge]

Doing some further research I found that pictures taken in Branson at the end of October did have the location in the Metadata. Checked Christmas pictures and most of them had the location. I was wrong because I happened to look at a few that didn't have it. Downloaded a couple of pictures taken today as test shots and, voila, Metadata did have location though if I transferred the pictures to my iPhone 16 the location was missing. So issue isn't with my camera(s) but between Canon Connect and iPhone. So it is down a downgraded issue.

 

[P-visie]

Doing some further research I found that pictures taken in Branson at the end of October did have the location in the Metadata. Checked Christmas pictures and most of them had the location. I was wrong because I happened to look at a few that didn't have it. Downloaded a couple of pictures taken today as test shots and, voila, Metadata did have location though if I transferred the pictures to my iPhone 16 the location was missing. So issue isn't with my camera(s) but between Canon Connect and iPhone. So it is down a downgraded issue.

As @koenkooi has pointed out, the Canon Connect app needs permanent access to your phones location. The app not having permanent access to the location on your phone may result in missing location information or the app assigning the location of the previous picture to the ‘current’ picture(s).

 

[Old Sarge]

Thank you for your reply. I checked that setting and it shows "Always" for Camera Connect. As I noted in my second post, I was mistaken about the location information not being in the metadata when downloading from the card to my computer. It is there most of the time (sometimes the camera is asleep, I grab it and take a shot before the iPhone/Camera connection is fully active). The problem seems now to just exist when I import pictures to the phone so it isn't a major issue since I don't use Camera Connect to import that many pictures to my phone. Thanks again for your response.

 

[ronbyram]

NEW GPS issue. I have my R6 Mark II and I use the Canon Camera Connect to sync my GPS location from My Apple 13 Pro Max. But When I Import and display within LRC. the Location 250 Yards away. I am in an indoor Arena. I don't know if it's a LRC issue or a Camera / Phone Software sync issue? just seeing if others have this issue. Figure I would start here first.. Thoughts

 

[GaryMak]

Man, I hate to throw cold water on this, but I think the issue is with the consistent unreliability of Canon Connect software. (And clunky Canon software in general.) It is totally unreliable, no matter what camera I've used. With some of my cameras, I've NEVER gotten it to connect. R5? G1-X MKIII? Forget it! Take the R5. I spent 45" on the phone with the factory rep a while back, because the R5 simple would not connect with my iPhone. We went through every conceivable connection trick, checked everything. Finally he told me the R5 was broken and I should send it in. I did so. Spent $XXX dollars. Tech called me and said they could find nothing wrong with it, in particular with the BlueTooth function which was to spec, and were sending it back. (Side note, I got my money back after I complained about this exercise in futility.) I called Canon again now that for sure everything was working, and after going through everything again, the tech just gave up and said, "I have no idea why it won't connect." How's that for reliability? And that's on the R5! I have had some success with the G1-X MKIII, but as was pointed out by "P-visie" above, Canon Connect needs all things connected all the time, i.e., no "going to sleep" by either the camera or the phone, otherwise, no GPS... That means you're concentrating on shooting and then, afterwards, find out that there was no GPS data that you thought you had! How frustrating (to use a mild term) is that?!?!?

I use the GPS all the time with the 5D MKIII and R5 via the Canon GP-E2. It just works and works well. I usually bring the G1-X MKIII (and before that the MKII) as a back up/movie/wider angle lens, and there of course is that GPS data problem. Here's how I've handled it... whether it's a solution for you, I cannot say, and am just offering up what I've done and works for me, given Canon's long time lousy, unreliable software issues.

Assumption: Trying to get the camera and iPhone to sync AND trying to concentrate on taking good images is mutually exclusive. ^%!@#$! around with the iPhone-camera every time I want to take a photo is frustrating, time consuming, and causes me to miss shots. Therefore I don't. It's a waste of my valuable time. Therefore:
Scenarios:
1) If I'm in one location for any given time, I'll just take a shot on my iPhone for the GPS data and add it to all the photos later. (More on that later.)
2) If I'm in one location for any given time, and If I'm using the G1-X as a backup (as described above) to my R5 or 5D with the GP-E2 unit, I'll just use the GPS data from the images from the R5/5D.
3) If I'm moving around a lot, I'll take a shot on my iPhone for each series, and match the GPS to each photo later. A bit time consuming but reasonably effective.

Now, key to all this is using GraphicConverter. If you don't know what it is, it's an amazing program, fairly easy to use, and it has been called the "Swiss Army Knife of Image Management." (Unfortunately, there is no Windows equivalent that I know of.) It was the program originally bundled with the Mac before Apple developed "Photos", which oddly can't really do much of anything that GraphicConverter can do. (While GraphicConverter has a lot of the same basic Photoshop functions, that's not really the major use of the program. You can read up on it on your own.) Anyway, it'll copy/paste GPS data from one image to another (or in batches, whatever) and allow you to "tweak" locations easily (via a pin on a map, so "ronbyram's" issue is easily resolved.) I will usually just dump all my images into a folder for the day, sort by EXIF date data, number and title all the images in a few seconds, and then through the browser, check visually for any photo that doesn't have a GPS icon, and then copy and paste GPS data into (and adjust if necessary) any image.

So, this allows me to get around all that unreliable, clunky "Canon Connect" issues, and just stick to shooting, taking an iPhone image for inputting the GPS data later if I have to, or just knowing I can quickly easily input the data later from images with the GP-E2 data.

Anyway, all I'm saying is that's what works for me and offer it up as food for thought and a possible alternative to frustrations and the unreliability/inability of Canon Connect. I've been doing this for many many years and it works very quickly and very well for me. Good luck to you!

 

[ronbyram]

Man, I hate to throw cold water on this, but I think the issue is with the consistent unreliability of Canon Connect software. (And clunky Canon software in general.) It is totally unreliable, no matter what camera I've used. With some of my cameras, I've NEVER gotten it to connect. R5? G1-X MKIII? Forget it! Take the R5. I spent 45" on the phone with the factory rep a while back, because the R5 simple would not connect with my iPhone. We went through every conceivable connection trick, checked everything. Finally he told me the R5 was broken and I should send it in. I did so. Spent $XXX dollars. Tech called me and said they could find nothing wrong with it, particular with the BlueTooth function which was to spec, and were sending it back. (Side note, I got my money back after I complained about this exercise in futility.) I called Canon again now that for sure everything was working, and after going through everything again, the tech just gave up and said, "I have no idea why it won't connect." How's that for reliability? And that's on the R5! I have had some success with the G1-X MKIII, but as was pointed out by "P-visie" above, Canon Connect needs all things connected all the time, i.e., no "going to sleep" by either the camera or the phone, otherwise, no GPS... That means you're concentrating on shooting and then, afterwards, find out that there was no GPS data that you thought you had! How frustrating (to use a mild term) is that?!?!?

I use the GPS all the time with the 5D MKIII and R5 via the Canon GP-E2. It just works and works well. I usually bring the G1-X MKIII (and before that the MKII) as a back up/movie/wider angle lens, and there of course is that GPS data problem. Here's how I've handled it... whether it's a solution for you, I cannot say, and am just offering up what I've done and works for me, given Canon's long time lousy, unreliable software issues.

Assumption: Trying to get the camera and iPhone to sync AND trying to concentrate on taking good images is mutually exclusive. ^%!@#$! around with the iPhone-camera every time I want to take a photo is frustrating, time consuming, and causes me to miss shots. Therefore I don't. It's a waste of my valuable time. Therefore:
Scenarios:
1) If I'm in one location for any given time, I'll just take a shot on my iPhone for the GPS data and add it to all the photos later. (More on that later.)
2) If I'm in one location for any given time, and If I'm using the G1-X as a backup (as described above) to my R5 or 5D with the GP-E2 unit, I'll just use the GPS data from the images from the R5/5D.
3) If I'm moving around a lot, I'll take a shot on my iPhone for each series, and match the GPS to each photo later. A bit time consuming but reasonably effective.

Now, key to all this is using GraphicConverter. If you don't know what it is, it's an amazing program, fairly easy to use, and it has been called the "Swiss Army Knife of Image Management." (Unfortunately, there is no Windows equivalent that I know of.) It was the program originally bundled with the Mac before Apple developed "Photos", which oddly can't really do much of anything that GraphicConverter can do. (While GraphicConverter has a lot of the same basic Photoshop functions, that's not really the major use of the program. You can read up on it on your own.) Anyway, it'll copy/paste GPS data from one image to another (or in batches, whatever) and allow you to "tweak" locations easily (via a pin on a map, so "ronbyram's" issue is easily resolved.) I will usually just dump all my images into a folder for the day, sort by EXIF date data, number and title all the images in a few seconds, and then through the browser, check visually for any photo that doesn't have a GPS icon, and copy and paste) GPS data into (and adjust if necessary) any image.

So, this allows me to get around all that unreliable, clunky "Canon Connect" issues, and just stick to shooting, taking an iPhone image for inputting the GPS data later if I have to, or just knowing I can quickly easily input the data later from images with the GP-E2 data.

Anyway, all I'm saying is that's what works for me and offer it up as food for thought and a possible alternative to frustrations and the unreliability/inability of Canon Connect. I've been doing this for many many years and it works very quickly and very well for me. Good luck to you!

Hey Gary thanks for the reply. Awesome information. I too take a photo with my phone. and will try and match it up or else just do a bulk sync. But I thought I would ask the group sitting here on a cold North Carolina Sunday! Thanks! Ron

 

[koenkooi]

[...]but as was pointed out by "P-visie" above, Canon Connect needs all things connected all the time, i.e., no "going to sleep" by either the camera or the phone, otherwise, no GPS... That means you're concentrating on shooting and then, afterwards, find out that there was no GPS data that you thought you had! [...]

That's pretty much the opposite of what @P-visie is saying. He meant this setting:

Which enabled location access even when the app is in the background or when the phone is locked. Both the phone and camera will do powersaving and the R bodies will go to sleep with bluetooth enabled, it's how I use it on all my bluetooth capable Canon bodies.
So far, I've only had to check if Camera Connect was running after rebooting my phones and all my camera pick up the connection without manual intervention.

Over the past 5 years I've had the following issues:

1. Photos gettings stale coordinates, that was solved by changing location settings to 'Always', as shown above
2. Missing coordinates because it takes a few seconds to connect. I have a 2nd app logging every 5 minutes, I use Lightroom to correlate that track to pictures with missing coordinates.
3. Completely wrong coordinates. This has happened twice, one camera would think it's in Norway, the other would use the right location. Both times on an R7, which I sold.

I prefer using the app over the GP-E2 nowadays, but I still use the GP-E2 a lot.

For precision and accuracy, I can't say the GP-E2 is better all the time. Especially when there are cell towers close by, the app does a better job. With unobstructed access to the sky, the GP-E2 is better. In a forest both suck.

I wish Canon would make using the GP-E2 a bit easier, e.g. automatically switching to it when it's attached and trying bluetooth when it isn't. I also hope for a camera-powered GP-E3 that is smaller, multi-constellation and multiband.

 

[P-visie]

The alternatives to using the Canon Connect app are:

• Use an app to create a GPS track on your smartphone (search for gpx track in the appstore).
• Use a GPS device (e.g Garmin) to create a GPS track.
• Use the GPS track from the phone or GPS device in Lightroom to add the location to your photo’s.

This works fine as long as the time on the camera is identical to the time on your smartphone or GPS device.