The GP-1 measures about two inches square and fits neatly onto your hotshoe or can be attached to a camera strap.  Its operation is simple: plug the cable into the camera via the 10-pin remote terminal cable; turn the camera on; and wait for the LED to turn green.  In my experience, this takes less than a minute, but I’ve seen reports stating times up to two minutes.  It’s even faster after you’ve taken a few shots and turn the camera off to walk to another location, and then turn it back on at your new spot.  Here I’ve seen times as fast as five seconds.  Power comes from the camera battery, so there are no worries there.

I like to travel and geotagging has always been fun for me.  There are other methods to geotag images using separate GPS devices, but why would I want to go through all those extra steps when I can insert the data directly from the camera?  Once the data is attached to the metadata, you need a way to access it.  You can use my favorite application, Adobe’s Lightroom; the free Nikon software, NXView; or Apple Aperture.

Once you have imported the photos into Lightroom, you can find the information in the Metadata section of the Library module, located on the right side panel.  Any photo with the GPS metadata will display it here.

If you click on the arrow to the right of the lat/long, it will take you to a Google Maps page displaying your location when the picture was taken.  Click here to see where this image takes you.  Ain’t that neat?

When I post images with GPS data to my PBase account (www.pbase.com/radjr), you will see a notation under the image title.  Once again, you will be taken to a map of the photo’s location. This one was taken in Aruba.  Many other photo sites also have this capability.  The larger photo sites (Flickr, PBase, and others) give you the ability to geotag a photo after you upload it to their site.  If you have an account there (they’re free), you, too, can join in the geotagging excitement.

The GP-1 lists for $199.95, but you can get it for  much less than that by looking around at several photography equipment retailers.  Is it worth it?  It is for me.  You’ll have to decide for yourself.  It provides another way to have fun with your photography.

We talked a little about traveling with your camera back in July.  I have two Tenba camera bags – one large and one small.  This time I took the small one for the day trips and got on the airplane with my Tamrac roll-away.  The roll-away allowed me to keep my gear with me on the plane, and it was easier to get onto the boat.  With proper packing, I had my camera and all my lenses, with my computer and two external hard drives for backup.  My tripod and monopod were packed in my suitcase.  I was ready to go.  Here is the Tamrac.

We stopped at Holland America’s leased island, Half Moon Cay, the next day.  I shot a few photos as I walked around the island.  There really wasn’t much there that wasn’t directly intended for fun, fun, fun – a bar, beach chairs, and kiosks for necklaces or t-shirts.  Since we were on one of the first boats to the island, there were very few folks there, allowing me to shoot images of the area without too much worry about people walking through my scene.

This was the least interesting part of the trip, since the little island provided very little of interest if you weren’t there for a swim and some tasty libations.  I headed back to the ship to play with the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 beta.  Maybe I can have some fun playing with its new features.  I’ll let you know what I find there in the near future.