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Tuesday June 17, 2008
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 When I shoot photos with my vintage Canon Digital Rebel, I also carry a little GPS recorder in my pocket. As soon as I rendezvous with my laptop, the GPS data gets integrated into the photo EXIF data and my pictures are geotagged. Hey, am I King Geek or what? Until a few minutes ago, I thought I was. Now, I'll have to write through my stream of tears.
My technology has fallen one step behind the curve. Yes, I should be geotagging, but I should also know which direction my camera was pointing. In most cases there's no real advantage to knowing, but I'd be lying if I hadn't wished for this ability for those scattered cases where it does make a difference. Voila, it's here! Made to work with Ricoh's 500SE GPS-ready digital camera, GeoSpatial Experts' "Ricoh Compass-GPS Module" adds a compass heading to the suite of GPS data already there.
Though a crush to my fragile ego, the desire to know which way you're facing isn't just a Geoff-centric desire. Ask Rick Bobbitt, the GeoSpatial Experts expert (aka, president).
"The ability to tell which direction each photo was taken has been the number-one request from our photo-mapping customers. If a photo is snapped from the middle of the street, the GIS user can now see by the arrow which side of the street the photo represents when they look at the map layer. This wasn't possible before the Ricoh Compass-GPS Module was introduced."
The whole shooting match integrates with GeoSpatial Experts GPS-Photo Link software, allowing you to plot your photos on a map and include an arrow showing exactly where you were looking. Does it sound like a little thing? I suspect it's really a big thing, though maybe not yet. It's really expensive. Add camera, software, 2 GB memory card, camera bag and the Compass-GPS module together and you're out $1759 before clicking picture number one.
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