Geomet’r GPS

Received the Geomet’r GPS (web, Amazon) yesterday. Looked professional. Nice packaging. Thought it was a little wierd that I hadto apply the velcro to the unit itself but I just thought that the hotshoe adapter could be used for the Nikon or Fuji and were different sizes. No major concern there.

So I look over the instructions real quick to find out that there is an on/off switch and that there is an led that blinks when it is trying to get a lock on the gps sats and then a solid light when lock is gained.

It plugs into the D300 just fine. I turn it on (it doesn’t require the D300 to be on… Note to self: Remember to turn the GPS off so that I don’t come out to a dead battery on the camera) and the thing starts blinking! WOOHOO! Searching for some sats!

Ok so now I dig through the menus on the camera to figure out how to turn on the location data…. I get that turned on and walk outside.. Within 30 seconds th light goes solid…

I take a few shots and head back inside and download the pics. No location data… So I go back to the menus and see that I should be able to look at position data right on the camera. So I go back outside. No posit data…

I google the device and come back to the Amazon page. DOH! 1 out the 3 user comments says that it doesn’t seem to work wth the D300! Another said that it only worked for a little while..

I had contacted their support to find out about 10 pin pass through and got an answer back the next day. Someone on one of the forums mentioed that they never heard back from support. I guess the only way to know is to send them an e-mail. More info to come when/if I hear back from them.

GPS for D200 / D300

So I’ve been looking at GPS units for the D300 because you know you can plug a GPS into the D300 and it will record the GPS data in the metadata. You have some choices.. Nikon’s offering is the MC-35 cable. Ya know something.. too much cable.. too much bulk for me.. and it doesn’t include the GPS! You have to buy a PS and then a serial cable to connect to the MC-35. There are some other options such as Dawn Technologies di-GPS line, and the Solmeta GPS line. These options are in the $250+ neighborhoods.

So I found some mention of the Geomet’r GPS in some of the forums (either Nikonians or DPReview). So what makes this one so special? Well… honestly… the price. At $129 on Amazon it is within my reasonable range for testing. Everything has pro’s and con’s. This one’s pro is the price and simplicity. Plugs into the existing port on the D300 and draws it’s power from the D300. The con’s are that you can’t use a shutter release cable when using the GPS. It plugs into the same port. Most of the other options mentioned above have a pass-through port of some sort. The MC-35 lets you plug a standard D300 cable release into the unit. The Solmeta and Dawn Technologies units let you plug a Canon or other third party shutter release into it (one even comes with the shutter release cable!).

I ordered the Geomet’r cable so I will let you know what I find out after using it for a while.