What's the difference between the photograph below and the thousands I've shot before? If someone asked me where this photograph was taken then I would say, "Yosemite National Park in California at a place called Tunnel View which is on Highway 41." -- I could be more verbose but imagine all that being replaced by just giving out the latitude and longitude of the place where the photograph was taken. All I'd have to do then is find it on a map.





Geographic information can be embedded into photographs and that is known as geocoding. It is popular with photo sharing sites like Flickr which allow photographs to be dragged onto a map to be geo-tagged. However, if you happen to have one of the modern digital cameras like the Nikon D300, then you can take photographs with geographic information in them at the time of shooting. For example, the image above has this information embedded:
    Latitude: N 37° 42' 55.98"
    Longitude: W 119° 40' 37.068"
    Altitude: 1329 meters

I'm not sure if any cameras have built-in GPS units today, but I think we're soon going to have matchbox-sized cameras with just that. For now, it's a fairly expensive and a cumbersome way of doing things. First, you'll need a camera which supports GPS input and there aren't too many of those in the Digital SLR world. Then you'll need a GPS unit and a few special connecting cables...





Nikon D300 + Nikon MC-35 + Garmin Serial interface cable + Garmin GPSMap 60CSx




Unfortunately, Garmin does not supply the serial interface cable with its GPS units (or at least not with the unit I use) and Nikon does not supply its cameras with the GPS connecting cable. Those cables cost quite a bit and can potentially sound like a bad investment because: one, together they cost more than most GPS units available in the market and two, it is cumbersome with the cables, camera around the neck and the GPS unit on the belt. However, I thought it was fun and it just takes a little time getting used to and I can't wait to hit the trails with this setup.