BlackBerry Community Post

[#1]

Thanks to digital photography I take thousands of pictures a year. I have about 15,000 images stored on my computer, only sortable by date or folder name. So, I have recently started to tag these images with keywords describing the individuals and events in the pictures.  In the future when I want to be able to locate all pictures of my son sleeping in a car or pictures of my husband and I on vacation, I will be able to simply click on a few check boxes or type in a selection of keywords in my photo software.  Of course doing this for 15,000 images is a time consuming job.

Along with tagging the images with the people and activities in them I often use keywords to describe the location the image was taken. As cameras have become more advanced, some are now including GPS capabilities, which means that this will longer be necessary. Cameras with GPS technologies allow location information (longitude and latitude) to be written directly to the file at the moment the image is shot.  This ability is also available on some newer BlackBerry® smartphones and is termed "Geotagging".

What is geotagging?

A digital photo is geotagged when location data (latitude and longitude coordinates) are added to the digital file alongside the photo’s existing EXIF data.

What you need:

BlackBerry with camera and GPS (enabled)

How to turn on Geotagging:

(Note these instructions are specific to BlackBerry® Bold^TM smartphone because that is what I have)

• From camera screen click on the BlackBerry menu button (this is the button with the BlackBerry logo).
• 1. In this menu choose "Options"
• 2. Scroll down to "Geotagging" and set to "Enabled"
• 3. Click on the BlackBerry menu button again and choose "Save"

When you are in the camera screen you should see a small map icon in the right hand corner. This indicates that you have enabled geotagging.  However, in order for it to work you will also have to ensure that you have turned on GPS Services.

To turn on GPS Services on your BlackBerry:

1. Go to "Options"

 

2. Choose "Advanced Options"

3. Scroll down and click on "GPS"

4. Choose "Location On" for GPS Services

In the camera the geotag icon (the little globe in the right hand corner) needs to be white in order for the geotagging feature to work. If the icon is red it is not picking up your location via the GPS. For the most part this will be an issue when you are indoors or if you have just turned on your phone, as it may not have coordinated your location with the satellite yet.  To be sure that you are connecting with GPS - open BlackBerry Maps®  and "Start GPS navigation".

Now you are ready to shoot photos with geotags!

Watch for a future post on fun with Geotagging!

[#2]

Michelle

I recently found out how to use this on my Storm and gave it an "extended" test on a vacation trip around Nova Scotia  and  Maine.   When I would get to a locatIon I would use my Storm to get a couple of geotagged photo's and then use my SLR for other pictures.  I we traveled I uploaded the geotagged images to my flickr account so the folks back home could follow along with how our trip was progressing. ( Flickr has an option to show a google map of the location for a geotagged image.) 

Now that Im back home Im going to figure away to use the images from my Store as a reference point to put the location information into the  images I took with my SLR.  

One thing that I found is that the Storm always uses the GMT time / date for the EXIF data in the image file  rather than the current time /date on the phone.. So the image file name has the correct  (local) time and date but the images have GMT internally.. Is there a way to tell the phone to store the local time in the EXIF data?

Gary 

[#3]

Where is the Reset button on the Blackberry Pearl 8110?

[#4]

Hi Gary -

Great question. I don't actully know the answer to that.  Let me see if I can find out for you!

[#5]

Shakina - please post unrelated questions to the Fourms. In this case - try the Pearl board

[#6]

So it won't geotag without first going into bbmaps and clicking "start gps navigation"???

Isn't it a pita to have to do that whenever you want to snap a pic?  Can we just leave gps nav running in the background forever or would that kill the battery too fast?  I thought that by turning location services on that the geotagging would work with just that...aren't location services constantly checking out location anyways???

[#7]

@mike you can leave GPS running. In my experience it will take a moment to find the satelite however if  your device was in the holster. You can tell if it is ready by the colour of the GPS icon on the right hand corner of the Camera screen.

[#8]

I'm looking forward to using this feature now!!

And Michelle. The Lego Dinosaur photo looks very familiar! hehehe