I just discovered -- somewhat to my horror -- that when I copy photos from my phone to my PC, the EXIF location data gets changed to my PC's location.?ÿ I've been copying project photos to my PC and then deleting them from my phone, and?ÿ I was counting on the location data to help me determine which photos correspond to which site (152 sites in this particular project).?ÿ I'll have to rely on other means at this point, but if there's a way to preserve that data when copying I'd like to know about it to prevent this kind of snafu in the future.
Thanks!
Specifics? What kind of phone and what copy process/software?
I checked some of my photos and find the location preserved.?ÿ Samsung phone, copied to Win 7 PC over USB by dragging out of the phone's camera folder with file explorer.
Jim,
You had me worried there for a bit.?ÿ I don't seem to have that problem with my Samsung S9.?ÿ I have my phone upload the photos to OneDrive and then I move them to the appropriate drive from there.
Do you still have the photos on the phone?
Is it possible that location was not enabled when the pictures were taken, and the last recorded location was stored in each picture, then that false location correctly read out when the pictures were copied?
Never heard that before!
scarry indeed. What Exif tools do You use to look at the gps data.
And what app do you use to take the photo??s. We use OpenCamera on Android phones.
we mostly mail our photo??s from phone to ourselves Outlook and have no problems.
?ÿ
Christof.
I'm not sure what I was looking at last night, but when I checked a random sampling of the photos this morning the original location data appears to be intact.?ÿ I'll dive into this more later, but for now I'm thinking that I was just plain wrong in my original post.?ÿ Sorry for what appears to be a false alarm.
What Exif tools do You use to look at the gps data.
I'm using Xnview to export the data, but also the plain old Windows file properties box.
Ugh, something is definitely not right.?ÿ *Most* of the photos I've checked have the correct location data, but at least one shows up about 300' from an unrelated site.?ÿ Most of these sites are miles apart, only a few are closer than 1/2 mile of each other.
Here's what I use
command line tool to extract data (GPS) from all pictures in a directory
@jim-frame do you know if the location information was ever correct? I’ve found that if I drive somewhere new and my phone hasn’t had occasion to query the GPS chip for location, and take a photo as the first action with the phone, a stale location can get stamped in. Opening a map that actively queries the GPS chip can maybe help. Have you ever opened a map application and it shows your previous location, pauses, sometimes has to work for reception, then gets current location and zooms to current location? I think that if you took a photo in that period of time, it would stamp that stale location in the exif data. I’m also not sure how active or passive the camera application is querying the GPS chip for location.
@protracted I suspect that's what I'm seeing. There's no consistency with the 150+ photos I'm reviewing; most times the location is correct, but I've now found several that are off from hundreds of feet to miles. Now that I know, I'll adjust my field procedures so that I don't have to rely on the EXIF data to confirm a location.
@jim-frame There are probably field procedures that would reliably stamp the location, particularly if you just need to get as close as the site. I've also found that once the phone and camera is in active use it seems to do a better job updating the locations as well. Although taking other approaches so you don't need it might be easier or more reliable.
Opening a mapping program like google maps that directly queries GPS and once you have a correct location, taking photos might be a viable field procedure. I've only tested that casually and haven't needed to test it rigorously so might want to check it thoroughly before relying on it. Taking photos "on the map" might be an option as well. Geopaparazzi is one such app that takes photos "on the map." There is a decent amount of configuration to get Geopaparazzi set up to be most useful but I've found it to be a very effective tool.
I have heard a small chalk board in the photo will work well... 🙂
I'm guessing you don't have an iPhone, but photos on the iCloud server can be transferred without losing location data. I select the photos on the phone then copy by iCloud link.
Opening a mapping program like google maps that directly queries GPS and once you have a correct location, taking photos might be a viable field procedure.
I like that idea.
