https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4169358
I've just given my newly acquired G7X II its first run out today, to check everything worked as it should and I thought I'd avail of the GPS logging facility in the Canon Camera Connect app, to save the locations on my snaps.
As fans of my other thread on the G7X II will be aware, I was finding connecting camera and smartphone via WiFi to be a bit hit'n'miss. I also ran into problems today with an apparent inability to sync GPS data to the camera such that Android [or, to be more exact, Google Photos] could pick it up.
Luckily, a bit of trial and error on both parts has resulted in me being able to connect fairly quickly & reliably to the camera from my smartphone and also sync the GPS data so that It shows up properly in Google Photos. Since the info wasn't to be found online [hence the 'trial and error' bit], I thought I'd note down what works for me, just in case anyone else is similarly stuck, or finding the G7X II's WiFi potential a bit lacking:
[I'll assume you've already run through pairing your phone with the camera for the first time, so won't go through that. That process is adequately explained in the Canon Camera Connect [hereafter known as CCC] interface].
Connecting Camera to Smartphone
The first few times I tried this, CCC on my phone took several minutes to find my camera and connect to it. I was opening CCC and enabling WiFi on the phone at the pretty much the same time or in quick succession. I've found it works much more reliably if you do it in this particular order:
- Press Wifi button on phone and select your Android gadget in the list of previously connected devices [apologies for the crappy phone snaps].
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- Wait a few seconds while the 'Searching...' screen appears.
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- Wait until the 'Searching...' screen changes to the 'Waiting to Connect...' screen, before you launch the CCC app on your phone. If you do things in this order, it should connect almost instantly. Doing it the other way round ie. CCC first, then camera WiFi is much more temperamental and takes a lot longer.
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Saving GPS Data to Photos
Again, the basic setting up of GPS logging in the CCC app and then synching that to the photos on the camera is well enough explained in the CCC app itself and the process is pretty seamless, so I won't cover that here.
However, I found that, even though my photos were showing as having GPS data attached, when viewed on the camera [satellite symbol & co-ords visible in info window], whenever I used CCC to download them to my phone, and opened them in Google Photos, there was no GPS data visible. I even went to far as to download an EXIF Viewer app on my phone, just to double-check in case the data was actually there, but was just being ignored by Google Photos [not beyond the bounds of possibility, given how crappy most Google software is]. I found that the location EXIF data wasn't there.
So, after a fruitless search on the web for Google Photos-related reasons why this might be so, I went back to the CCC app on my phone, where I stumbled across a setting which is set ON by default and which wipes GPS data from the photos when you download them to the phone.
[I'll give you a minute or two to contemplate the genius of the person who designed an app which allows you to add GPS data to your photos and download them to your devices but then set a [nigh on invisible] preference that defaults to wiping the GPS data off the photos again, when you do so!]
Back with me?...
Good! On with the show. If you want CCC app NOT to delete the GPS data when you download images to your Android device, you need to do the following:
- Click on the 'Images on Camera' button
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- On the Images screen which follows, there are three wee dots to the right of the 'Select' button. If you're like me, you might have thought those dots were part of the 'Select' button itself, signifying it was a drop-down menu. However, those 3 dots are actually another menu in their own right
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- Tap on the 3 dots and you'll be taken to a new screen were you can chose whether images downloaded to your Android device will be resized [I changed that too, as it defaults to YES as well] and also an option to 'Delete Location Information' --again, not very clearly labelled as you might think this just removes the GPS data from images on the camera. However, it turns out this setting deletes GPS data from the images as they download to your device. So, if you want to keep the GPS data you just logged and attached to your photos [and why the Hell wouldn't you?], change this to 'Don't Delete'.
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Hey Presto! --now, when you download your images to your Android device, the GPS info will be preserved
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Is GPS Logging a Battery Hog?
One more thing that might be of interest as regards GPS logging: How much of a battery drain is it?
Well, I went for my snap-taking walk of about 3 or 4 miles today lasting about an hour and a quarter. When I got back and checked battery consumption on my phone, the system stats told me that CCC app had used 4% of my battery during that time.
By my very, very unscientific extrapolation that would result in: 4% per hour = 25 hours on a full charge [100 / 4 = 25].
Now, obviously you'd not get anywhere near that, as that doesn't account for anything else that the phone might be doing and which will be running down the battery also. But it's not too shabby. I'll need to test further with longer outings, but it does [fingers crossed!] seem like CCC app's GPS logging might not be as horrific a battery drain as I initially feared it might be.
Well, time for me to shut up again. I hope this post was of some use to some of you.
