Thursday, November 25, 2010

Review of the Nikon GP-1 GPS Unit

So I've decided to go at yet another tangent on this blog and write a review of the Nikon GP-1 GPS Unit pictured above. I've owned this unit for over a year now and have used it extensively so maybe this review might provide some insight that a normal review over a few days wouldn't/couldn't...

So what does the Nikon GP-1 do? Well essentially it's a small GPS receiver that attaches to a compatible Nikon camera (not all Nikon cameras have a GPS port so check whether yours does before buying!) and essentially records GPS data about where the photo was taken as part of the image's EXIF data. That data can then be used to place the photo on a map. For example, one could use it to upload a photo to Google maps and have it show up when people search that particular place where you've taken the photo. Several other such services exist of course; it needn't be Google. Flickr does this too; in fact most of my photos on Flickr have been geotagged using the GP-1 and the result can be see on my map. Neat huh?

So what is there to say about the Nikon GP-1 other than what it does. Well, first off I should say that I absolutely love it. As a techie, such a gadget really is up my street :-). I love the convenience it provides of knowing exactly where a photo was taken and not needing to remember the names of the places you've visited or the particular street you were in etc... It's also very light and not cumbersome as it can be attached to the camera's hot shoe or the strap. In summary, I'd buy it again without hesitation if I needed to.

All this said and done, I thought I'd warn of a few pitfalls you may want to consider:

First of all the price. They're currently selling at around the €200 if you shop around. That's not cheap for a GPS receiver (compare that price to a basic car Sat Nav these days). I guess it's a niche market and there's therefore little by way of competition for Nikon in this area. Still, I guess part of the price is justified by how small it is.

Secondly, battery consumption is also a consideration. The GP-1 unit feeds off the camera's battery directly and can drain it. I tend to leave the GP-1 unit on all the time as long as my camera is on. There's a power saving option of it turning on only when you press the shutter half way but I find that this then wastes me time waiting for it to find it's location. I therefore prefer to leave it on continually tracking satellites so it knows my location as soon as I decide to take a picture. As a result though, battery drain is significant. I'd guesstimate that battery life drops by a half to a third of the normal time. That said, this doesn't bother me much either. Third party batteries are fairly cheap these days and I'm more than happy to have three or four of them in my camera bag charged up and ready in case I need.

A third consideration is receiver sensitivity. In other words, just how good its GPS signal reception is. Most professional reviews will quote a satellite acquisition time or around 45 seconds. In my experience though, this is somewhat optimistic. If you've got a clear sky above you and you're in an open space, then 45 seconds sounds about right. In practice though, the time it takes for the GP-1 to acquire the satellite signals will degrade severely if you're close to tall buildings and/or if part of the sky is obstructed in some manner. For example, it can easily degrade to 2-3 minutes if you're shooting photos inside a car. To be fair, all GPS receivers will suffer from this problem. At the end of the day, if a good portion of the sky is obstructed in some manner, then a GPS receiver may not be able to acquire the satellite signals it needs to work out the location. The point I want to make here is that you shouldn't expect it to perform as well as other GPS receivers you may be used to. For example, it takes considerably less for my Sat Nav to work out it's location inside a car then it takes the GP-1 unit. I guess this is partly the price to pay for it being such a compact unit.

The final consideration is my only real complaint about the device. For some odd reason, Nikon came up with two connectors for the device. One for the Nikon D90, the GP1-CA90, and one for the higher end cameras (i.e. D300s, D700 etc.), the GP1-CA10. The D90's connector is a rectangular connector; somewhat like a small USB plug. The one for the higher end cameras is a round connector. Since I've got the Nikon D90; I use the square connector. The problem I had with this is that I initially use to leave the connector always plugged into the camera's socket (even when not using it) as I thought removing it and re-inserting it would eventually lead to it becoming loose. After four odd months of using it though, the camera's socket became loose anyway and, as a result, the camera would no longer detect that the GP-1 was connected. Thankfully my camera was still under warranty and the socket was replaced free of charge by a Nikon repair centre. Since then, I've decided to remove the connector when I'm not using it and only insert it when I'm going to use the GP-1. It's been nearly a year now and so far I haven't had any issues. That said, it seems to me that the design of this (lower end?) connector is faulty. Having a square connector/socket means that it's more prone to being damaged/becoming loose if a force is applied to it in any direction (e.g. if you hit it against something or if it's squashed in the camera bag). A round connector makes considerably more sense in this case. Secondly, if you've had a look at the two connectors, you'll realise that the GP1-CA10 (round) connector has the added advantage that the wire exits the connector at 90 degrees to it, whereas the wire for the GP1-CA90 exits straight out. As a result, the GP1-CA90 protrudes out of the camera body considerably more and is therefore more likely to get in the way/be accidentally hit. Given this seemingly obvious design flaw, I'm not sure why Nikon came up with a new connector for the Nikon D90 (the connector for the higher end cameras predates the one for the D90) and, worse still, why it seems to have stuck with it for the D5000 and the new D7000...

On balance, I still have no problem giving the thumbs up to the GP-1. Even though the above is a fairly serious design flaw, I have had no problem with the connector once I started removing it when not in use and I'm hoping this persists. So long as one is a bit careful with it and takes into account the above drawbacks, then I think it can work really well and can turn out to be very useful, especially when doing travel photography.

Hope that helps. Let me know if you've used the GP-1 and/or are considering one and have any other thoughts/questions about it.

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