Geotagging: GPS co-ordinate formats and conversion

Hi Wendy - if you have the location settings "on" in your phone (assuming that's what you are using to take all your plant pix) - on iPhone if you go to Albums - then look around in there - People and Places comes up - then it shows a map - and you can drill it down to very detailed map location.

but you have to have location setting switched to "on" --- experiment with it first.

all the usual privacy warnings go with my input here - it's up to you to make the decision but it's fun to be able to look back esp if you're on a garden tour trip etc

I'm sure other smart phone brands have a similar location setting. I'm no expert so just google.

 

Thanks. Yes, I did have that and I used it. I didn't realize until just now when I checked that on the phone (my camera), I can see the digital co-ordinates that google wants. I wonder whether the last time I did this I was using a real camera and only could see the co-ordinates on the computer. I'm very happy to learn that I can read them now in the useful format, so thanks for your posting.

What I did yesterday, where I could see the co-ordinates (I'm still using Picasa), I can't do a copy, so I have to write them out, and the format was 123 8\'28.8" W and 49 17\'17.5" N . But I can't put that into google, even if I do it -123 8\'28.8" , 49 17\'17.5". I had to convert it to google's format, after first figuring out the name of this format or the one I want to convert to. Next, since I can't quite remember which number belongs to which unit, I first had to find something that explains how to parse that format. Then, in the conversion programs, there are usually three input boxes for this format, so I had to type in 49 in the first box, 17 in the feet box, and 17.5 in the inches or whatever that box is. Then I took the digital equivalent and put that into the google location query, did it again for longitude. First I had to find the right conversion program, which I usually bookmark but can never find again. I'm so happy to learn that I can type in the numbers from the phone.

 

With all that work - we better come up w the correct plant IDs

The new geocaching?

It’s amazing how accurate that location tool is on iPh brand ... someone took several photos during a couple diff summers at our family cabin acreage and the resulting location map (ie spot where phone was when it took photo) is accurate enuf to show a diff of 15 feet - and likely more exact if one was to be strict about it and measure.

 

I don't understand, why you need to convert anything? Is this a wrong place?
123°8'28.8"W, 49°17'17.5"N - Google Search

 

You can type better than I can. This is good, and it's nice to know, makes it worth having made the complaint. Except every time I do it, I get a message like

Maps can't find 123 8\'28.8" W, 49 17\'17.5" N
Make sure your search is spelled correctly. Try adding a city, state, or zip code.​

Maybe you knew to put in the degree sign, leave out the back slash, leave out the spaces?

 

There are many ways how you can type those coordinates. Works without degree sign also:
123 8 28.8W, 49 17 17.5N - Google Search
123 8'28.8"W, 49 17'17.5"N - Google Search
W123 8 28.8, N49 17 17.5 - Google Search
N49 17 17.5, W123 8 28.8 - Google Search
N49 17 17.5,W123 8 28.8 - Google Search
N49 17 17.5 W123 8 28.8 - Google Search

 

Nice to know. Thanks, Sulev.

 

Wendy - I have had similar confusion entering coordinates in to google map (a fresh water well application in BC) ... and certainly very helpful info fr member

I wonder if this would be a handy how-to separate pinned topic for those who are intentionally recording location of photos while on heritage or garden or nature tours ... handy for Public cherry blossoms or fall foliage trees etc

Then again - does the location and date show if one uploads a pic to these forums? And then if another member clicks to save the image for future reference ... I don’t know.

I leave it with you . Feel free to delete this msg cuz its way off your original question .

 

Just for the record, Georgia Strait and I did a little test - I learned how to save a photo to my phone (on Samsung, long hold), and we learned that the location does not come with the posted photos.
Since Sulev has demonstrated that everyone except me should be able to enter co-ordinates to google maps any way you can think of, I don't think this needs a separate thread.

 

You can also use decimal degrees. Simplest of all is to drop 49.288194, -123.141333 into google search (you need the comma, as otherwise google treats it as a maths question; you need the minus sign to indicate west [or south, if before the first figure]; 49.288194, 123.141333 will give a location [Inner Mongolia, China!] in the eastern hemisphere).

You can also extract the decimal degrees numbers from an URL, as that is how URLs do locations.

 

That was the problem, Michael. I thought I needed the decimal degrees, but only had this other format. Now I've learned that I have the other format on my desktop, but do have the decimal ones on the phone. And the other format seems to be OK in google when other people type it.

 

Wendy, converting degrees, minutes, seconds to decimal degrees is easy on a spreadsheet or calculator; but there are also lots of Websites that will do the conversion for you.

 

It should work for you too, just omit symbols, that don't belong to co-ordinates (in your case backslashes) and write N and W close to numbers, either in front of degrees or after seconds, without a space between.

 

Yes, I was trying to pick one. First was that I didn't know that the name of the degrees, minutes, seconds system is DMS, nor did I know that the other system is called decimal, and some other page talked about UTM. Today, the help seems easy to find; yesterday, not so much. Then I didn't know where to parse the degrees, minutes and seconds, since the conversion websites I was offered asked for degrees, minutes and seconds in separate fields. If I do this enough, I'll remember it. But I didn't understand the syntax, that for 123 8\'28.8" , the space is the first separator, and the slash means nothing so the 8' go together.

So when you say I can do this on a calculator, I see for the first time that I have several calculator apps on my Windows desktop. Would I have something that will do this conversion?

 

The FCC conversion tool looks good: Degrees Minutes Seconds to/from Decimal Degrees

It looks like the three numbers in the string can be parsed out by treating space and special characters (usually ' and ") as separators.

 

The conversion formula for DMS to decimal degrees is pretty obvious: = D + M/60 + S/3600.

 

Obvious? I feel so stupid, I'm going to crawl into bed and have a good cry.

 

Thanks, Margot., me too. I was starting from needing to learn that they were D, M and S and what that meant. Well, now I know all that and where the D ends and the M starts and ends. And then I find that google lets us plug in the DMS numbers just as they are.

Well, that's no reason not to understand all this after getting this far.

Well, I see that I am supposed to have the app to do this - here is an explanation: Converting coordinates in Windows 10 using Calculator Application
It's the regular calculator, select Scientific, click dms (it's to the left of 1 2 3), enter the numbers as d.ms, then click deg (between dms and 1 2 3). Except that it converts -123 8\'28.8, which I enter as -123.8288, to -124.39111, whereas the website in posting #15 gives -123.141333, which is the number Michael F gave as well. So there is either something missing in that explanation page (some constant that needs to be applied??) or the deg calculator doesn't work properly, or it's me again not doing something right.

I actually did decide to do the calculation vitog gave us: starting with 123 8\'28.8, I took 123, added 8 divided by 60, which is .133, added 28.8 divided by 3600, which is .008; so 123 + .133 + .008 came to 123.141‬, as expected.

 

Try using the following format (which I found) to enter the DMS coordinates into the calculator:

 

Thank you, that's it. -123 8\'28.8, needs to be entered as -123.08288, gives the correct -123.1413.