Likewise, the failure of the device to work with as promised with an external flash reader could be a deal-breaker for users of card form-factors not internally supported.

I hope this issues can be addressed by ATP in future firmware. I had high hopes for being able to suggest this as a somewhat easier way to geotag for less software-inclined friends and family.

I’ve written an article of my initial geotagging experiences with a Wintec WBT-201 GPS logger. The article is primarily about using the logger on the Mac OS, but also may function as a review of the logger, which I find quite usable.

First time with an Olympus (xD card) it mapped all six photos to my home coordinates – where I was mapping. But I took the pictures 6 miles away.

Second time with a Canon G1 (CF Card) it mapped all six photos to the Gulf of Guinea, Africa. Although I took all six photos in Walnut Creek, CA and three of the six were shot in different locations – but all six were mapped to the same point in the Gulf of Guinea.

So sump’n up there.

I’m going to give it a third try and reread the manual again for the tenth time and see if it is user error, but I’m noticing issues seem to be pretty consistent. I don’t think this is ready for prime time just yet.
-cjd

Note – I received an email response back from the PM at ATP indicating they think they have a new flash to take care of one of my issues. That person also indicated that since we are in daylight savings I needed to adjust my time. DOH!

So, kudos to ATP for rather quick response. Things are looking up!
-cjd

[Edited at May 08, 2008 16:05:38 PM.]

The ATP Photo Finder logs every five SECONDS, not minutes. It logs faster than the Sony GPS-CS1. Also, you can plug the Photo Finder up via USB cable (same standard cable like the Sony model uses) and access the .log files. Plus, Photo Finder works fine on a Mac (even Intel/Leopard), unlike the Sony. And, to top it all off, the log files are standard, and not the Sonyfied versions the GPS-CS1.

I had to find a replacement for my CS1 when it stopped working with current Mac OS X versions, and the ATP unit was my choice.

Down sides: Mine shuts off too, which is a dealbreaker for me. Also, the backlit display looks pretty, but can’t be read in direct sunlight. It would be great if you were using it at night or in dark places, but it seems more folks take pictures in the day than at night.

GPS tagging by memory card takes about 7 seconds a photo, so expect a 1GB card full of photos to take a good long time, and hope the battery doesn’t run down during the process or it could possibly corrupt an image (or file system).

Still, a good step forward.

The Sony is also a completely different animal, it is basically a USB drive that writes it’s own files to the drive. When you get back to the computer, you plug the Sony in, and run some software that applies the time stamp to the file.

There is some drawbacks though, Sony only ship software for Windows with the unit. If you have an Intel Mac and are running Tiger, you’re fine. It doesn’t work if you have a PPC and running Tiger. Apple seems to have fixed this problem with Leopard though, and now neither Intel or PPC will work. So mine is sitting in my camera bag, useless.

Also on the Mac, I use a a program called HoudahGeo for my geotagging, I can at least tag using the Google Maps interface to tell where I took the pictures.