The "Unleashed"

[Birna Rørslett]

...
Those of us that also use Olympus OMD M43 cameras effectively have similar functionality built into the Oly cameras.

No direct GPS support, though.

[Seapy]

The main thrust of my interest in 'Unleashed' is for the camera control. I regularly do star trails and stacked star sets.  Being able to monitor the camera from a short distance is a great benefit, especially in the cold at night.

I am skeptical about the 'smart'phone GPS, so far I have found it to be highly inaccurate, and by several miles out in the sticks. Even when there is a good signal it's often a street out.  I would rather use a dedicated GPS device such as my Garmin 60CSX, although that's not bluetooth... I can readily input the GPS data during pp. in Lightroom Maps, IF I need it, which with astro photography is questionable, given I know my favourite locations pretty well.

[Hugh_3170]

Agreed - Olympus OMD geotagging relies on the smart phone recording a log of GPS coordinates and times, which are later merged into the metadata of the images of how many Olympus cameras that were in use during the session that the log spans.  The log is also written onto the memory card.  The log itself is quite compact. 

Downsides (apart from carrying a smart phone) is that this represents an extra step in ones daily workflow and that the log has to be applied to each camera that the log pertains to; upside is that more than one camera can use the same log. 

I am looking forward to my Unleashed copies (N1 & N2) when they arrive;  they should be leaving Germany around the 4th of October.

No direct GPS support, though.

[MFloyd]

I don't have immediately use of geographical location data in my pictures. Nevertheless, since now I have a capable WiFi / Bluetooth camera (D850), I briefly used it with my smartphone (iPhone X) and this seems to work quite seamlessly. With regard to the precision: I first noted a sizeable lack of precision; but then I selected the higher (and more frequent) location data refresh in the SnapBridge menu, and everything became fine (probably at the cost of heavier battery drain).

[Birna Rørslett]

If only GPS coordinates are required, and one doesn't mind the involved hassle, nothing more exotic than a small GPS logger and an EXIFTool script is needed. Saves a lot of battery drain on the phone as well plus the chances of getting superior accuracy are present. For some applications that alone would make one forgive the added efforts.

However, it is undeniably the easiest and most transparent solution to add a tiny GPS device to the camera and having the camera itself supporting, and recording, a NMEA data stream as the shutter is released.

[Birna Rørslett]

Here is the predecessor to the Unleashed sitting snugly inside my L-bracket, on the Df.  The new Unleashed is even smaller, less than half the size.

[Seapy]

When a GPS location really matters to me, I carry a second body, say a D200 plugged into the Garmin 60CSX, then take a photograph of the plant in question and it's name tag, ensuring the clocks of both are in synch.  A proper GPS module would of course be neater with fewer wires but since I have the Garmin and don't have a proper module I use what I have. When I get home I bundle all the images into one folder, listed by time, they match up.

There is a large estate not far from me with many good and varied Rhododendrons in a woodland setting.  It's invaluable to have the GPS location data for the specific plants because I revisit from time to time with the combined flowering season being so long.  My memory isn't particularly good and I can get confused as to which I have photographed and which I haven't, a screenshot map and list of names are very helpful.

[Birna Rørslett]

Having geo-coordinates on every photo allows for easy spatial searching. Very useful for me as a working botanist. I've been a customer of the Foolography devices for more than a decade and they initially replaced earlier, more cumbersome solutions.

[Alaun]

Trying to quote from the Photokina thread:

As a backer, I got mine already at the photokina.
It just works fine. I got the N1 version (I tested it with D200, D810, D4, D850, all with the round 10 pin socket). It comes with two little cables to connect it further with the USB socket (2 cables for 2 different USB sockets).
I use it with my apple phone (so far it seems Apple has restricted the download to phones, could not find the software for iPads, though in principle it should work there).
The connection with the USB port is needed for getting exposure settings and for downloading the picture (a small version) into the app. As it is a small picture, it works with the D850 also fine (no extensive waiting). When the phone went into sleeping mode, it takes about one or two seconds to reconnect, then it works instantly. If something does not seem to work, it is related to the settings on the camera (e.g. it seemed Af was not working, but that was due to my settings on the cameras).
After slightly more than a day, the reconnection did not seem to work. I guess this is due to some settings on the phone. I simply had to de-connect the little item and re-connect it again, then everything was fine again. Also the GPS-data from the phone get into the picture-file. It still recognises some cameras wrongly, but that is already known to foolography and it does not impact the functionality of the tool (they just did not have all cameras to read out the correct IDs).

[Alaun]

Akira, yes that's UV  (with SEU Gen.2 on the UV Nikkor on D810 fully modified)