Aerial Photography: how to shoot and log aerial photos and not spend a fortune

jmeyer | Landscape | Photography Tips | 23/01/2013 01:00am

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How to get the track log of your aerial photos from the GPS

Export your files
Download your shots to a folder; in this case, copy the folder of images and .gpx files from the Video Disc to your computer. To match up your own shots using the GlobalSat GPS logger, in GlobalSat Data Logger PC Utility click Track Record > Load Track Points, then Get File > OK > Select All > Load.

Go to File > Select All Files, then Map > ViewPoint, and Export > GPX File. Save this file in your image folder. (This will differ depending on your GPS logger and its accompanying software.)

Fire up GeoSetter
Download and install a free copy of GeoSetter from www.geosetter.de. Run the software and select GoImages>OpenFolder, and navigate to the folder with the images and the .gpx file in it. Next hit Ctrl+A to select all the images on the left of the screen.

Sync the GPS log
GeoSetter will handle most image files, but not PhotoShop PSD files. Go to Images>Synchronize WithGPSDataFiles. Depending on where the images were captured, you may have to make changes here; if your camera wasn’t set to the correct time, it can also be corrected here. You don’t need to change the default options for these images, so just press OK.

Position the images
You’ll now see an info screen telling you that the GPS data has been found for all 19 images, so click Yes to continue. Then voilà! – our route is displayed on a Google Map, with each image marked by a pointer.

All the pointers except for one are blue: the image displayed in the bottom-left window of your screen has a purple pointer. You can zoom in and out and move with the controls in the top-right of the map.

Mark the images
Before you change anything, click Images> SaveChanges. This will write all the location info into the EXIF data in each of your images or, in the case of raw format files, add an .xmp file with this data. Confirm the changes. Now click on any blue pointer on the map to see the image from that point in the bottom-left.

Explore the map
Double-click a blue pointer to get the shooting data in a pop-up window. Click an image thumbnail on the left; its pin turns purple and shows where it was captured. Now grab a pointer and drag it to a new position on the map. This is how you can ‘correct’ the location of an image if, for example, the clock was wrong.

Change view
Just above the top-left corner of the map is a yellow, green, and blue icon. Click on this, and select Google Hybrid Map. This gives a satellite photo as a background to view your track and images. The disadvantage is that it has to download much more data to display the satellite image, and this can take a while on a slow internet connection.

Zoom in
Zoom into the area of The Needles. You can clearly see the three images captured there. Click on the pointers and view the angles of the shots – it’s surprisingly accurate, and you can see that we flew quite a few circuits over that iconic landmark.

A GPS logger isn’t just good for mapping shots while flying, it’s also great for mapping shots while hiking or driving.

PAGE 1: What you need to take good aerial photography
PAGE 2: How to get the track log of your aerial photos from the GPS

Posted on Wednesday, January 23rd, 2013 at 1:00 am under Landscape, Photography Tips.