Dave Etchells, Publisher, Imaging Resource: We had a number of readers, also, asking about GPS, and why you can attach a GPS receiver, but people are saying why wasn’t GPS built into the camera?

Toshiaki Akagi: We always have a GP-1 GPS accessory, then we want to use a GP-1, and if we include a GPS function in the camera, the camera would be bigger. And GPS still has a little problem, so for example indoors, we cannot get GPS data, then we are considering now to adapt the GPS to the next model, in the future. While you are indoors, the performance is not stable, so that’s why we gave up to install the function in the body as of now.

There is more, so read the rest at imaging-resource.com (found via nikonrumors.com).]]> http://www.foolography.com/2012/01/23/nikon-interview-questions-about-gps/feed/ 0 http://www.foolography.com/2012/01/19/nikon-d4-gps-with-unleashed-d200/ http://www.foolography.com/2012/01/19/nikon-d4-gps-with-unleashed-d200/#comments Thu, 19 Jan 2012 18:24:49 +0000 Oliver Perialis http://www.foolography.com/?p=1183 We were at PMA@CES, exhibiting our products. On a slow morning I wandered over to the CES, heading straight to the Nikon booth. After admiring the D4 for a while, I seized the opportunity, to gather proof for everyone, that our Unleashed D200+ is compatible with the D4. I took my favorite GPS, which managed to keep a fix even inside the Convention Center hall and plugged an Unleashed into the D4. It fits beautifully.

After 3 seconds, the Unleashed had connected to the GPS, and the GPS icon on the LCD lit up:

Took a photo, and what do you know: it’s geotagged with our location in Las Vegas!

View Larger Map

So there you go: Proof that our Unleashed D200+ is fully compatible with the new Nikon D4!

PS. I went to see Canon’s GP-E1, which they announced 3 months ago! They did not have one with them! Can you believe it? I certainly couldn’t! On top of that, no-one at the booth had any knowledge about it, other than having heard it exists.

I won’t go over the spec’s again, you can read those on dpreview.com, engadget or any other gear-site. One thing you might not read much about on other sites, are its GPS capabilities:

The Nikon D4 does not have built-in GPS. This might be unbelievable to some people, but I completely understand Nikon’s decision. Yes, there are plenty of other cameras that have built-in GPS, and that cost a fraction of the D4. But before I’ll try to give you some pointers as to why Nikon might have decided against GPS functionality. But first, the good news:

Our Unleashed D200+ is compatible with the Nikon D4

That means that you’ll have the possibility of adding what some people call “the next best thing to built-in GPS”, but we consider it to be even better than built-in GPS: our tiny Bluetooth Module on the camera, connected wirelessly to an external GPS of your choice. You can choose the GPS you prefer, whether it’s the cheapest you can find, or a sub-meter Trimble or Leica GPS that may well be worth more that the camera itself. And the greatest advantage: you can easily upgrade that GPS without having to upgrade the whole system.

So that is one of the key reasons why I wouldn’t want my high-end camera to have GPS built-in. But back to Nikon and their reasons not to build it in: Many people argue that it’s a feature that only a small portion of photographers would want that feature, but everyone would have to pay for it, so the additional cost is not feasible for features 90% of the customers won’t use. I don’t believe it! If that were true, there would never be any new features in new cameras, and there would certainly be no Ethernet port on the D4 – would there? Are you going to use that?

I believe they had technical reasons, which I’ve explained many times before: The D4 is a professional camera. It is aimed at professionals, who extreme demands on their equipment. They will not accept a half-baked solution, that works “most of the time” or is “relatively accurate”. No, they demand perfect solutions, and if they get anything else, you’ll be sure to hear a lot of complaints. Fact is: GPS receivers that are any good, require an extremely sensitive Antenna. The problem is that a camera as complex as the D4 has a lot of electronics that will definitely generate a lot of noise. Electronics manufacturers have problems getting those noise levels low enough to pass tests for FCC, CE or other regulatory certification. Obviously, this noise will interfere with that extremely sensitive Antenna. Until they figure out a solution to that problem, they’ll either need to sacrifice sensitivity of the antenna, or make compromises in other parts of the camera. Or, they get their best engineers to work on this problem… But then again, who is going to work on the core features of the next cameras?

They’ll figure it out eventually, but it’s not as easy as it seems to everyone who’s gotten used to really fast, fairly precise GPS on their iPhone. Technically, that’s almost entirely thanks to wifi and cellular network connectivity. The GPS is just refining that position. If you don’t believe me, try getting a position in a place where you don’t have any reception, and there’s no wifi nearby. There’s as good as no chance that will work.

Anyway, now that the D4 is announced, and we’ll confirm that our Unleashed will work, when we’ll test it at CES in Las Vegas in a few days, make use of our special offer, and get a free GPS when you purchase an Unleashed D200+.

Photo by our new customer Eddy Westveer – Thanks for sending us the picture!

The launch of our new products went really well, and these new Unleasheds for the D3100, D5000, D7000 and D90 were very well received by the visitors.

The newly announced D7000 (it is still unclear where in Nikons lineup it belongs) and even the entry-level D3100 announced just a few weeks ago, both have a GPS port, for directly connecting a GPS to it for geotagging your images. Along with the D5000 and the D90, which already had such a port, and of course all of Nikons professional cameras, which have had one for several years. This means that all of Nikons current DSLRs are capable of direct geotagging!

Of course, you’re wondering when our Unleashed will fit these new cameras… but you might just have to wait a few more days to get that answer ;-)

D7000 GPS port (dpreview.com)	D3100 GPS port (engadget.com)

That’s right, we did it again. Our new, wireless direct barcode scanning solution for Nikon DSLRs, the Unleashed – Barcode Edition, won the DIMA 2010 Innovative Digital Product award, which was presented to us at the Sneak Peek Press event of PMA2010.

The Unleashed – Barcode Edition is a by-product of our main product – the Unleashed. However, instead of connecting to a Bluetooth GPS, it connects to a Bluetooth barcode scanner. The photographer scans in a barcode, which is embedded in the EXIF data of all of the following photos, until the next barcode is scanned.

Until now, Direct barcode scanning was only possible with the Fuji S5, which has been discontinued, and no successor was announced. The Unleashed – Barcode Edition enables direct barcode scanning with all high-end Nikon DSLRs – from the D200 and up. On top of that, the setup is entirely wireless.

The next batch of Unleasheds has been produced, production costs have slightly decreased, and we were thus able to reduce the final price. At the same time, we decided to offer two great new Holux GPS receivers bundled with the Unleashed, pre-paired for your convenience.

These are the Holux M-1000C or the tiny M-1200E. They are both based on the MTK MT3329 low power consumption GPS chipset, meaning great reception quality and very long battery life. Also, both include logging features for documenting travelling routes, or even for indirectly geotagging photos taken with your backup camera, that might not have an Unleashed.

The new prices are:

Unleashed:
199.00 €
167.23 € excl. VAT

Unleashed+M-1000C or Unleashed+M-1200E:
199.00+70.00=269.00 €
167.23+58.82=226.05 € excl. VAT

If the price was holding you back and you have not done so already, go get one in our online-shop.

If you’d prefer to buy the Unleashed from your local dealer or favorite online-retailer, tell them to contact us – we have great conditions for retailers and distributors, and are just setting up our worldwide distribution network. They can become a part of it.

While we’re setting up world-wide distribution to bring the Unleashed to retailers near you, we’ve set up a small online-shop for your convenience in the meantime. You can find it here: www.foolography.com/shop

Since we have quite a few prospective customers waiting for the availability of the Unleashed, we are expecting to be out of stock fairly soon, so don’t hesitate. However, production for the next batch has already begun, and will be available shortly.

We’re very glad to have finally come to this point and we hope you’re as excited as we are. If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to contact us.

We wish you a happy holiday season, possibly including a lot of fun with your new Unleashed!

The first batch will probably be sold out very soon, as we have accumulated numerous requests via e-mail, but a page will be added to this website very soon, for everyone to order the Unleashed online.

The next, much larger production should take just a few weeks, now that all the initial hurdles have been overcome. Starting here in Germany, we are in the process of setting up worldwide distribution, so expect to find the Unleashed at your local photo dealer soon.

It fits somewhere in between the D60 and the D90, it’s a little bigger than the D60, but doesn’t have a built-in AF-motor. Instead it features a swiveling LCD display, Liveview, and 12.3 Megapixels and HD Movie recording. Anyway, read the details elsewhere.

But guess what – it supports direct geotagging! It has the same connector as the D90. So the Unleashed D90 that’s reaching its final stages of development, will work for the D5000 just as well.

Direct geotagging for the entire line-up of Nikon’s DSLRs by foolography coming soon, stay tuned for that.