Why Travel Cameras with Geotagging Are a Great Idea

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I have recently been scanning old 35mm slides and converting them to digital files. Many of them were taken while on vacation, and it’s amazing how many images I have from places that I can no longer recall the name. Today, this is less of a problem because many programs allow you to add geo tags to your digital photos. But it can be time consuming, and if you forget to do it, you might end up looking at the image a year from now or 5 years from now and not be able to remember where it was taken. That’s why travel cameras with geotagging features are such a great idea.

There are now a variety of digital cameras with GPS built right in. That means the camera knows where you are and can embed the information right into your photos’s meta data. The technology is nothing like the old cameras that used to add a time/date stamp right on the front of your photo, thus ruining the image. Cameras with geotagging built in to them simply add the geo data to the EXIF data. EXIF data includes information such as time and date the image was taken, the type of camera used, exposure settings and other data about how the image was taken.

The nice thing about travel cameras with geotagging is that they not only can add the latitude and longitude of where you are, but also the name of the city, town, country, region or landmark. If you’re standing in front of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco or the Louvre Museum in Paris, the camera can tell you exactly where you are and embed that information into your photos. When you get home, you’ll be able to remember where you were and even plot your entire vacation on a map, showing where and when your photos were taken.

There are a variety of cameras with geotagging features, from waterproof rugged cameras such as the Panasonic DMC-TS4 or the Nikon AW100, to advanced point-and-shoot digital cameras like the Canon PowerShot S100 or the Panasonic Lumix ZS20.

If you’re looking for the best travel camera for 2012, one with geotagging is a great choice.