I recently purchased the AMOD AGL3080 GPS Data Logger, a GPS-based device designed to provide location information for digital photos. I originally purchased it for one of my other hobbies, flying. I take the device with me whenever I go flying and use it to track my flightpath so I can create a visual track of my flights. This past week I finally used the device for its intended use, geo-tagging photographs.
Prior to setting off for France I reached out to iKangaroo through Twitter for advice on places to check out during my brief visit. He suggested a walk along the Canal St. Martin which was featured in Amilee and also walking through The Marais district including a pass by St. Paul's. I decided to add a visit to Montmartre and Sacre Coeur to the itinerary and figured this long walk would be a great opportunity to test out the GPS Data Logger.
The device is small and easily strapped to the front of my daypack. After turning it on I reset it so it would reacquire satellites on this side of the world. As soon as the satellite was acquired it began tracking every step we took.
Whenever I would stop to take a picture I simply clicked the waypoint button on the device and it would log the time and location of the photo. After an enjoyable day of walking my wife and I returned to the hotel where I downloaded both the GPS logs and my digital photos. The program provided with the hardware synced the photos and data logs and in a matter of minutes we were able to see a track of our walk and click on each spot where we took a photo.
This is an invaluable tool for those jam packed trips where you see so many sites that you start to question which site was which, especially helpful for trips like Paris where I must have photographed 20 churches. Now that my photos are geo-tagged I can simply layer them over a Google map and find the specific spot where the photo was taken. Instead of manually identifying the location of each photo I can now easily publish my photos on a Panoramio or Flickr maps sharing with others the exact spot each photo was taken.
For any traveler that fancies themselves as part time photographer I cannot recommend this device enough.
