Customer Reviews

Sony GPS-CS1 GPS Device for CyberShot Digital Cameras

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Hopefully it's fairly clear to all from the product description: this is a niche gadget, not a full-featured GPS. It doesn't have a display (nor audio) and you can't access its data in real time. Instead, you upload the logs later and can use the included Sony software to match the log data to your digital photos. The compact size and low price of the GPS-CS1 make it a great deal for those of us who only want a photo tagger, don't need a full-size GPS unit, and don't want to buy a GPS camera.

The GPS-CS1 unit is about the size and weight of my clamshell cell phone.

It takes a good several minutes to acquire GPS signal, which was sometimes frustrating. It doesn't track very well indoors, and I found that I had to take it outside to turn it on or it wouldn't track at all (even if I took it outside later). It tracked great on the dashboard of the rental car; so-so in the center console; very well in the outside pocket of my soft-sided tote bag. I read that if it loses signal, it'll try to estimate location based on before and after readings, which may be why it worked just fine when we went in and out of buildings throughout our day.

The unit is kind of a "set it and forget it" thing, so the little indicator lights for signal and battery life are easy to overlook and it's easy to forget you've left it on. We were fortunate to notice the low battery warning. Battery life was good; we got about five solid days of use out of it (several hours at a time each day) before needing a replacement. It takes one standard AA, which is handy for the road.

It isn't waterproof, but it tracks just fine inside a Ziploc bag. (No, I didn't immerse it.)

There's no interface to update (or even see) what time the GPS unit thinks it is; presumably it's getting that information from the satellites. Make sure your camera's time is synchronized in advance to a source that's reasonably likely to match satellite time.

You upload the GPS logs to a computer using the included mini-to-full USB cable (conveniently, the same cable my camera uses) and the included GPS Image Tracker software. It prompts for a GMT (UTC) offset, but it wasn't clear to me what would happen if I changed this value from the default (based, I think, on the offset of the computer). I had synched both my computer and camera to local time while I was traveling, so everything matched correctly without any adjustments.

Once you've uploaded your photos, Image Tracker will match the timestamps from the logs to the EXIF timestamps on the photos to determine the location of the photos. (It works with any JPG files having EXIF timestamp data, whether they came from a Sony CyberShot camera or not.) It's easy to open multiple GPS logs or entire folders of photos as a single batch, and the timestamp processing is reasonably quick. If you upload photos from a time period that doesn't match any log, Image Tracker will make its best guess about how to geotag them. Unfortunately, there's no way to view its guess on a map to see whether you agree, and no way to manually override if you don't. You either tag them with Image Tracker's guess or you don't tag them at all. Image Tracker only handles lat + lon, no altitude.

I was wary about saving the EXIF data out to the photos, but it worked extremely well with no loss of any other EXIF or image data. You can choose whether to save the results as new images or replace the original ones. A cryptic warning pops up when you try to save and SEEMS to suggest that you can't, but if you select "Yes, Save Anyway" it goes right ahead and works just fine. I don't know whether this is because I have a Canon camera, or some other reason, but it doesn't matter since it does work.

Apparently the Sony Picture Motion Browser really does only work with CyberShot cameras, so I didn't try that.

The logs are standard NMEA format (with a non-standard .log extension), so once you upload them you can share them, or parse them however you want and use them for other things (you may need to change .log to .nmea).

The latest version of RoboGEO (which is not free) recognizes Sony's .log extension as NMEA; it handles the matching more quickly and provides quite a bit more functionality than Sony's basics (altitude, tag copying, manual tag editing, Google Earth integration, etc., etc.), so I switched to that and prefer it. The altitude readings were frequently way off and I don't know whether that's the fault of the GPS unit or of RoboGEO.

I use Flickr for photo sharing. There's a setting there that you have to manually change BEFORE you upload EXIF-geotagged photos; once you do this, it'll map all newly-uploaded photos automagically!

I really enjoy this gadget and I'm currently the envy of all my Flickrin' friends. Sony's awfully clever to have identified this niche and they've filled it well; the limitations of the included software are the reason I am giving it four stars rather than a full five.

This is one cool thingie.. at first I was worried how this would work with my Non-Sony camera, but it turns out that the software work for any camera and is so easy its a dream.

Before starting to photograph, turn on your GPS, it should have sight of the sky, leave it on all day. then when you come home import all your picture and start the sony GSP software (connect the GPS with a USB cable) it will import the GSP track file, once imported click on the option to add pictures, go to the folde with the days pictures and select all. then simply press save. its that easy and works. there is nothing more to it.

Without a doubt my favorite piece of extra gear, its permanently clipped to the handle of my camera backpack. Generally I get about 40 hours of operation from a Lithium battery or 8-12 hours from a regular alkaline.

Buy this if you want to record the geographic position where you have captured a image.

Buy this If you want to be able to display all the images from your vacation on GoogleEarth.

Do not buy if the actual place you photographed does not matter to you.

The Sony GPS-CS1 is a special-purpose GPS device that records a track log with position and time so you can geotag photos. There's no screen or output of any kind except for a few status lights, so you can't use the GPS-CS1 to tell where you are. I bought mine from Amazon for $93. (I got the GPSCS1KA package; there's also a similar package that costs $10 more and might have extra software for Sony cameras.)

You use the GPS-CS1 just like you use any GPS device to geotag photos: You turn the device on and leave it on while you shoot. Then you feed the GPS track log (which the GPS-CS1 and most other devices make available as a text file) and the photos into a tagging program which takes the time of each photo, finds that time in the track log, interpolates to calculate the position (lattitude, logitude, and elevation), and stores it as metadata in the photo itself. Once a photo is tagged, lots of applications and web sites can do various things with it, such as showing it on a map.

Most people are probably familiar with GPS devices these days as car navigation systems, but that kind of navigation isn't really a GPS technology. The GPS part of the device just determines its position. Another computer in the device shows it on a stored map and tells you when and where to turn based on a calculated route. Fancy navigation features are great to have, but they have nothing at all to do with geotagging photos. For that you just need the track log.

So, in theory, the Sony GPS-CS1 can do the job. In reality, it can't. Neither can another inexpensive GPS device I tried, a Magellan eXplorist 210 ($142).

Yesterday I drove about 15 miles on roads with no tree cover, no tall buildings, and no nearby mountains. I put the Sony GPS-CS1 and the Magellan eXplorist 210 on the dashboard of my car, and a Garmin 60CSx ($357) on the center console, where it had a much less clear view of the sky. Then I took the three track logs and displayed them in Google Earth (an application for the Mac and other platforms, not the web site).

The results showed that the Garmin track followed the road, even the lane, exactly, and the other two were way off. The Magellan has me between the lanes, and the Sony has me in on the wrong side.

The Magellan isn't necessarily better than the Sony. A bit later in the trip, the Sony was closer to the Garmin, and on the road, while the Magellan was way off.

Looking at the whole route, the Garmin was always on the road, and the other two were mostly in the wrong place. By "wrong place," I mean that the error was much greater than what the GPS system is capable of. If you want to tag your photos within one or two hundred feet of the actual position, then fine, but for lots of applications that's just too far off. Bear in mind that my conditions were nearly ideal. In a more urban setting the two cheaper devices would probably be even more wrong.

It's not that the Sony and the Magellan were always wrong. But such instruments need to be judged based on their reliability, and that's determined by when they're wrong, not when they're right. The Garmin was never wrong, not on my trip yesterday, nor on any other outing I've taken it on since I got it a few weeks ago.

It's not that Garmin knows something that Sony and Magellan don't. It's that the Garmin 60CSx has a SIRFstarIII GPS chip and the other two don't. I didn't run the test, but if I compared a $300+ SIRFstarIII-chip-based Magellan to a $150 Garmin without the chip, the results would show the higher-priced device to be right and the cheaper one to be wrong. Alas, the only attraction of the Sony is its low price, and that's just not enough to pay for electronics that actually work.

The Sony GPS-CS1 has a few other problems:

1. It won't connect to a PowerPC-based Mac (even with OS X 10.4.10; I didn't try the as-yet-unreleased 10.5), although it works fine on an Intel-based Mac or on a Windows Vista PC. (I understand it also works fine on XP and Linux.) I have a lot of experience connecting USB drives to my Mac, and my guess is that it's not hard to make one that connects. Clearly, Sony just doesn't care. (Some reviewers blame the problem on Apple, but the PowerPC-based Macs have been around for years with no problems connecting to everyone else's USB devices.)

2. Because the Sony has no display, you can't confirm that it's tracking. On devices with a screen, you can view the track to confirm that you've got it set up right. All you have on the Sony is a blinking light that tells you it's locked onto GPS satellites.

So, my advice for buying a GPS device for geotagging is to get a device with SIRFstarIII chip. Lots of photographers spend $2000 or more on their body and lenses, so why not $350 for the GPS? As as bonus, it will tell you how to get to the shoot and how to get home afterwards. If an accuracy of a few hundred feet is all you need and you don't use a PowerPC-based Mac, then the Sony GPS-CS1 is OK, and it does cost only $93.

I bought the Sony GPS-CS1 GPS Device a couple months ago and was able to use the product right away without any hassles.

Pros:
~It is simple to use.
~Suitably priced.
~Easy to carry.
~Well designed body for its purpose
~The software provided does a descent job in tagging the photographs.

Cons:
~It is not the most accurate GPS device (but then that is not truly a requirement for photographs).
~The start time in acquiring the signal (especially if it is cold) can take a few minutes, which is annoying at times. Workaround is to turn the device ON for a few minutes (warm up) before taking it out in the clear sky.

Overall, I am pretty happy I bought it and will continue to use it extensively.

This little wonder is great for a very specific market: digital photographers. Clip the device to your belt, or stuff it in your backpack while camping. It keeps track of your location every 15 seconds. When you get home, download the log from the unit, download your pictures from your camera, and the included software updates the EXIF data in your photos with your location on the planet at the time the photo was taken.

This is a very limited device, of little use to many people. As I've said to friends, this device isn't for you if you want to know where you're going or where you are. It only tracks where you have been. I had great fun uploading my photos to flickr with the updated EXIF location data, and watching it map the photos onto a map of where I had been. You should be aware that the unit, while accurate to about 10 meters, doesn't achieve a satellite lock all the time. It seems more sensitive to buildings in a city, large cliffs, anything that doesn't let you have a clear line-of-sight to the sky. With that said, the included software does a pretty good job of estimating where you were when you took the picture. Using other software (not included), you can map your position on Google Earth and do a flying tour of where you have been on vacation, etc. Apparently Google Earth plans to support the GPS-CS1 directly in the future. Also, the unit eats batteries, particularly when it searches for satellite signals. If you're going inside, you may want to shut it off, and turn it back on when you leave. Still, allowing for these limitations, and considering its price, you'll find it a great addition to your digital photography.

Writes standard GPS NMEA logs in plain text format, very easy to parse. The device will open as a USB drive. I have the Cybershot version, which does work with other brand digital cameras. Not all of the software will install if you don't have Sony's image software that comes with their cameras; however, "GPS Image Tracker" will. This will alter your photos EXIF tags so that they will automatically be placed on a map when uploaded to photo sites like Flickr. The software works by comparing the GPS time stamps with the ones in your photos, so remember to check your clock on the Camera!

My experiences with this unit fall right in line with those written by other reviewers both positive and negative. On the plus side its a well designed and built gadget. Easy to use and fun to trace your travels (after the fact). Its bigger than what the photos made it seem like but not so bulky as to be a pain to use.

On the negative side it chews up batteries pretty quickly, especially if it is searching for satellite signals. I use NiMH rechargeables otherwise id be tossing alkalines away like tissue.

The location data is pretty accurate but you will get errors greater than the specs state. Mainly because there is such a long lapse (15 sec.) between the sample data. So the software has to make guesses for pictures that may have been taken between the sample points. By and large it is more than accurate enough for the stated purpose.

I took the unit to Mexico on vacation, and it worked very well. I can now plot all my photos onto Google earth. A couple of things you need to know about this unit are.
1. It has up a accuracy of +/- 10m so it may look like you were driving thru the buildings along the road instead of driving on the road. Not a big deal. 2. It doesn't work inside at all. 3. If you walk inside and it losses it's signal it hunts for it and has a very rapid drain on the battery. I drained the first battery in just a couple of hours because I was going in and out of building sightseeing. But it is still worth the $100 bucks.

I purchased this device and it worked with OS X 10.3.x, then stopped working with 10.4.x :-( I just today (April 17th, 2009) tested it with OS X 10.5.6 and it mounted on the desktop and worked! I have no idea what is the earliest version of 10.5 that it works with...

This item has worked great around Korea Next month it will head over to the Philippines. I will leave it on the boat while I am down below diving. It will be great to see on a map exactly where I was down below diving.