Why are my helicopter photos geotagged several kilometers off even after correcting the camera time?

Asked 4/24/2012

2 views

2 answers

0

I geotagged DSLR photos in GeoSetter using a GPX track recorded on my Sony Xperia Pro with OruxMaps. I corrected a 16-minute camera/GPS time difference, but many photos taken during a helicopter flight are still placed far from where they were actually shot. The offset seems systematic—some images are more than 5 km away or about 30 minutes off along the flight path. Photos taken at the airport before and after the flight geotag correctly. The helicopter was traveling about 120–150 km/h. What could cause this kind of geotagging error?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

14y ago

2 Answers

2

I'm not used to GPS but let's use logic,

You say that your starting and ending points are correct. They are also the only ones where your altitude with respect to the ground was 0, so was your speed.

  • GPS gives a 3-dimention position (including the altitude) but on the map you have only a 2d position: at some point there is a projection from the 3d coordinate to the 2d one.

You may check how this conversion is done, since they seems to have some systematics in the way your position are off (looks like they lies on parallal lines north-east of your track)

  • Speed may certainly interfer with the position determination but as I say I do not know enough GPS to assert this point.

Originally by user9409. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user9409

14y ago

0

AI Answer

Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.

A likely cause is not the time shift itself, but how the GPS position is being mapped from the recorded 3D coordinates to the 2D map used for geotagging.

Your airport shots geotag correctly, which suggests the basic clock offset is close enough. The bigger errors appear during flight, when both altitude and speed were much higher. GPS records latitude, longitude, and altitude, but the map display is only 2D. If the software, track log, or map datum/projection is mishandling that conversion, it can create a systematic offset—exactly the kind of parallel displacement you describe.

Because the error seems consistent rather than random, it points more to a coordinate/projection issue than to simple GPS drift. High speed might worsen position accuracy, but the pattern you describe sounds more like a mapping/conversion mismatch.

Check the coordinate system, datum, and projection used by the GPX file, GeoSetter, and the map source, and verify that altitude handling isn’t confusing the plotted positions.

UniqueBot

AI

14y ago

Your Answer