Aperture GPS Lat Long Format is Different than Nikon GP-1 for Geotagging

Thanks Allan and Steve!

I'm sorry I let this post wither ... I thought I was subscribed to answers and that no one had responded. I wasn't so didn't see that I had any responses until I posted a new question today, re: Snow Leopard and Boolean operator searches in AB.

Sorry.

Anyway, I'm using a D90 and the GP-1 but I'm only seeing the long mess for lat/long in Aperture versus what you're seeing Allan.

What do I have set differently (wrong in my case) in Aperture ... on in the Nikon?

It's not a precision thing, it's just the consistency of representation as you say.

I'm a boater used to seeing lat/long in conventional representation versus a long numeric string. In fact, it's pretty useless to me in that format because there is too much mental calculation required to quickly interpret "about" where I shot the photo.

Any ideas or suggestions to get me where Allan is?

The change is definitely happening in Aperture. I also have a Nikon (D90) and it uses the more common format I described (above) and is depicted (below).

In Allan's example (above), his Nikon would read:

39º 38.092
105º 19.934

That is how latitude/longitude is typically expressed in the boating world (GPS, charting applications, cruising guides, etc.).

And it's much easier to read and intuit as you are "a little above" or "almost" or whatever versus having to the divide by 60 or multiply by 6 mental nonsense.

My question is simple ... does Apple/Aperture have a way to change latitude and longitude format? All other software applications that accept position data do.

Thanks again,

Seems odd that Apple would not make this simple "math conversion" and "format choice" available in preferences. As I said, most of the world is doing the abbreviated decimal format thing, not the more lengthy and visually confusing (punctuation heavy) degrees, minutes, seconds, and tenths of seconds representation.

Especially with all of their arm-waving about geotagging and "faces & places" being the next big thing ...

I'm new here; do you know if Apple people ever read these threads? And if so, respond?

Hi Steve,

Thanks for keeping this thread alive with me. Maybe we can get someone in Cupertino interested ...

Unfortunately, this is what I find happens with Apple quite frequently. They make assumptions, re: the general computing consumer market and spread it like peanut butter over the rest of the world.

Even you have fallen into this 800 lb. chasm:

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I'd think that these days, when not so many people are actually using lat/long values to read physical maps, GPS data is mostly considered machine-readable data and not primarily for human visual consumption. For instance, Google Maps use internal lat/long representations like "lng =-105.270352" which seems even less human-friendly.

As far as human-readable representations, Google Earth displays coordinates like "105°16'48.47"W"; some would consider Google to be the 800-lb gorilla of GIS at this point.
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Actually, we write cruising guides for boaters and that industry ain't Googlin' aboard. In fact, the computers get kinda wet whenever you try! [smile]

It's a Garmin, Furuno, Raymarine electronic world ... complemented with hardcopy reference material (hopefully ours!). And that world doesn't use either of the two representations you mention.

I just looked in a few of the maine applications that I have on my computer and they ALL have no less than FIVE preference-level formats the user can choose to read latitude/longitude.

Apple is also missing the point that different countries prefer different localization of this position data ... similar to date/time stamping, etc.

Mr. Schorr, are you out there? [smile]

Best,

Mark

thanx steve. good thinking. too bad it didn't work ... but it really would need a preference setting. different strokes ... [smile]

yes and yes.

now let's see if apple chimes in on this topic someday.

best,