Points of Interest

[David Roth]

Is there (will there be) a variable that displays the Points of Interest metadata in Nikon cameras equipped with GPS?

[dennis]

Not sure if I understand your question.  As far as I know, Nikon's firmware only records basic GPS fields like latitude, longitude, altitude, and date/time.  I believe this is regardless of what device connected to the camera and is feeding GPS information (IOW a GPS device may be capable of other metadata such as heading etc but Nikon's firmware doesn't record this like due to only paying attention to certain "sentences").  So there is no POI metadata in the photos, just raw coordinates.

Now if you are talking about whether or not Photo Mechanic will load a POI database and map the coordinate to a POI (or reverse geocode), I cannot comment on whether or not we will be adding that as a feature.

--dennis

[David Roth]

The Nikon documentation for the CoolPix P610 (my camera) does imply that the POI information is written to the metadata. There is even a setting in the camera to enable or disable the function. Nikon's Windows 7 viewing software (ViewNX 2) does reveal it, but I have been unable to find a field name on their web site or see it in the Windows Property window. I don't have a metadata display program other than PhotoMechanic to check it further. I can't say that the information recorded for SE Asia was very useful, since I only saw political entities (region, province, district, sub-district, etc.) and no true points of interest such as a famous temple or pagoda. However, I was surprised when the camera told me I was next to a named campground in Rhode Island.

Something to keep in mind when interpreting customized Nikon metadata in the future.

Thanks.
DR

[Hayo Baan]

If the data is indeed stored int the file, your best chance of seeing it will be with exiftool. If you mail me a jpg from your camera, I can have a look too. That said, the info is probably in some non-standard field so chances of PM adding spcific support for it are slim, I think.

[dennis]

I did a little more investigation.  Nikon has tags in their proprietary maker note for location info.  This includes a field for "Location" (70 chars).  I believe this field is set in Nikon's software by taking the GPS coordinates and accessing Nikon's website to do the POI lookup.  I doubt this database is stored in the camera, and therefore if a photo is transferred directly to your computer without using something like Nikon's ViewNX software then I suspect this data will not be set.  If it is set by the camera directly then I can add code to grab this string.  Not sure what POILevel is or how useful it would be.

http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/TagNames/Nikon.html#LocationInfo

So I would need a photo directly from the camera (copied from the flash card using the Mac Finder or Windows Explored and not some other application).

--dennis

[dennis]

Well with further investigation I guess some Nikon cameras do indeed have the POI database stored in the camera and it is written by the camera (although you have to turn this on along with GPS).

http://www.nikonusa.com/en/learn-and-explore/article/gr9ozfki/built-in-world-maps.html

Guess I will look into displaying this data.

--dennis

[David Roth]

Thanks for researching this Dennis. If you still need them, attached are a Jpg and a screenshot of the data as displayed by ViewNX.

I was surprised that the camera had such a database in it. It was very mysterious when the POI information appeared on the camera screen and I was out on the trail taking pictures. At first, I thought there was some unmentioned wireless connection to Google Maps!

Dave Roth