Smartphones have been performing this function for a while now. The Iphone, Palm Pre and the various andriod phones are among the many phones that can do this. If you want a point and shoot camera that offers this functionality your options are much more limited. To the best of my knowledge there are currently two choices for point and shoot camers with a built in gps. One is the Nikon Cool Pix P6000 the other is the Sony DSC-HX5V. Of these two, the Sony appears more compact and better suited to carrying along on rides. I have read review of the Sony stating it can take 15 or 20 seconds for it to get a satellite lock. If you’re shooting while on the move via your bicycle those 15 or 20 seconds could throw off your geotag locations quit a bit and is worth considering. Unfortunately Canon has yet to release anything with an integrated gps, I am such a Canon fan I pretty much won’t buy a camera from another manufacturer. My powershots have served me far too well over the years to ditch them for one feature no matter how cool or useful. I personally am very surprised that more camera manufacturers including Canon aren’t jumping on the GPS bandwagon. Given how small many of the smartphones that have GPS chipsets built in are, there is no excuse not to add this feature to more cameras.

Fortunately there is another option available to geotag your photos. Rather than using a camera with a GPS built in you can use your existing GPS and camera together to accomplish the same thing. There are  a number of software programs available that will analyze your images and tracklogs and add location data based on matching time stamps. My current favorite geotagging software is RoboGeo. This software makes it very easy to mass tag a large number of photos. My current workflow for ride photos is to use my pc’ss card reader to open the images folder on my SD card in Robogeo. I then upload the corresponding track log to the Garmin connect site, then I export a GPX version from the Garmin site back to my pc. You could import the tcx file directly from the GPS, however I simply find it easier to export the file back to GPS after uploading since I already have to upload the data to the Garmin site and this method also makes it easier to quickly select the correct ride. I import the gpx file into Robogeo. Once both the track logs and images are loaded the software will tag each photo with coordinates which you can then save to the exif headers. I save the images back to the SD card when finished. Robogeo will also upload photos to Flickr and  create google earth and map files, I used this software to create the map I referenced earlier in this post. Once I have tagged my photos I then dump them into the autoimport folder for Iphoto on my mac mini and continue processing my photos via iphoto from either my mac mini or mac book pro. As soon as I can find a piece of software for the Mac that can do everything RoboGeo does I will move all of my processing to my macs. This writeup details some software for the Mac but I have yet to evaluate them fully so for now I stick with my PC for geotagging.

If you’re one of the many cyclists who have adopted a GPS based training device like the Garmin Edge series, I highly encourage you give geotagging a try. You are already capturing the data and it only takes a few minutes to apply it to your photos. I find that tagging the location for my shots just makes it even easier and more fun to recall all those great riding memories captured in photos. Robogeo offers a free trial and there are other free geotagging apps out there worth exploring. If any one finds a great mac app or even a better pc app drop me a line and share the details. Also feel free to hit me up if you have trouble getting started with geotagging. I’d be happy to try and point you in the right direction.