Geotagging on the Sony Alpha 7R III camera

 A new era of photography has begun. And it was started by a little app I found on Google Play.

Backstory: My phone has geotags, but my camera doesn't. My phone takes photos so badly, it's best not to take it out at all. It's such a crappy 100MP that you really had to figure out how to get it. And 200MP is probably on the way, which will break that record. And I still can't believe that my camera has 42MP, compared to my phone's 100MP. Everything seems exactly the opposite. But there's one catch: my camera doesn't have geotags. So I often take photos with both my phone and my camera, just to save the coordinates. So, in addition to taking photos with my camera, I also take out my phone, turn off my PDF reader, because when I take photos, it shuts down, and close Google Maps, which I use for orientation. I'm standing there, sorting through my gadgets, turning things on and off, just to save my location. But I know I'll have to compare these photos taken with the camera with those in my phone's photo folder, and some of them will inevitably get lost forever. And with old camera photos, if there's a recognizable place in the frame, you have to try to identify it with Google's intelligent recognition, find it in Street View—in short, it's all complicated and a pain. GPS coordinates are absolutely necessary. But they're not there. Well, they're sort of there, but how do you turn them on?

Native Sony software. Since the camera isn't connected to the Universe Earth's data field, it needs to be connected to a phone. It turns out that all of Sony's native software, literally everything, is complete and utter garbage. I mean, completely useless. I don't understand how the Japanese could have done this, or was it not they, not the people who made this wonderful camera, who made it for them, and they didn't even check it? I couldn't even update the camera's firmware because the upgrade program doesn't recognize the camera, and there's no way to upgrade from a flash card. I tried 10 cables and two laptops, but it was all useless. The manual says they don't guarantee a connection with a non-native camera cable. Sorry, I've had this camera for years, and I've used hundreds of cables in my life; I don't even remember this original cable ever existing. Okay, we're managing with the old firmware.

Connecting the camera to the phone. The camera can connect to external Wi-Fi, including the one shared by the phone, or it can generate its own Wi-Fi. Connecting a phone to it is difficult because it requires a password, which could be written on the battery cover (there's none), in the camera manual (there was none immediately after purchase), or on some text file in the camera's memory (the file is missing). Okay, there is an option – connecting via a QR code that the camera displays on the screen. By showing it to the phone, you can establish a connection. I recognized this code and even extracted the password from it. It connected. Well, geotags didn't appear for some reason. Luckily, in one of the information display modes on the camera's screen, there's an icon indicating whether the camera has coordinates or not. There's also a Bluetooth connection. I turned it on and checked "yes" for every option I could find in the camera settings: accessibility, default connection, and unconditional geotagging. Bluetooth pairs with the phone, but the device doesn't connect. When I try to connect, the phone tells me: "This Bluetooth, like all devices, doesn't connect easily by its very nature. Only through some special app." Okay. I found and downloaded two Sony apps for this purpose to my phone. They work like this: they're awkward, but they connect to the camera, and the image from the camera's viewfinder appears on the screen. So, you can, like, look at the phone, not the camera's screen or viewfinder, and take photos that way, through the phone. But why? By the way, geotags don't appear. And as soon as I simply minimize this app, it disconnects from the camera. Completely. Basically, someone made a ridiculous, pointless, and useless ploy for Sony just for the sake of reporting. But how can I enable these damn geotags that are in the camera system?

Brilliant. And then the solution came. It came with a simple gesture. A Google Play search. I found a small, lightweight, simple app, Alpha GPS Geotagging, specifically designed for Sony Alpha cameras (I hope there are apps for other models too), which does exactly that – geotags your photos. I installed the app on my phone and turned it on. It instantly recognized the camera, connected to it, and geotagged my photos, which I immediately saw on the geotag icon on the camera's display. That's it. The old period of life is over. Now every autumn leaf and every bird captured in a photo will be unique, with their own precise coordinates in space and time. There's a certain existential magic in this: when the exact coordinates of a dead bird are known, it will be like a monument to it, not made by human hands, like a personal name, something that will precisely immortalize it in the history of the world, when nothing else remains. The photo itself hardly captures its unique features, but this is like a unique identifier, forever distinguishing it as this particular bird in the entire history of the world. And how easy it was when someone created the program by hand, not through their ass, dear Sony, I'm writing this for you.
     But that wasn't all. A couple of days later, I was outside with my camera, about to take out my phone to turn on this wonderful app. As I turned it on, the phone beeped immediately after turning it on, and I saw that geotagging was enabled on the camera. I hadn't turned on the app on the phone, only minimized it. Although this is a death sentence for almost all apps: if minimized for a long time, they reset themselves, then when opened, they practically re-start. File Explorer opens without any previously opened folders, the viewer doesn't have any photos open when minimized, and the book opens unopened when minimized. This app really doesn't turn off unless you specifically disable it, and as soon as the camera is turned on, it instantly connects to it and delivers location information.

If I were the director of an IT company, I'd put the developer of this app in charge of the development department. This is probably the best specialized app I've ever encountered in my life.

Viewer. By the way, another strange set of problems. Have you noticed that it's impossible to copy GPS coordinates in Google Maps? Copying any text information has always been a problem everywhere, in all services, pages, networks, programs — everything in general. So, it's incredibly valuable when everything can be copied and I send the developers a warm hello and gratitude. So, in Google Maps, you can only copy coordinates if there are no objects nearby with an official address. If such an address is present, the GPS coordinates are automatically replaced with the address and become inaccessible. The second problem: there are practically no image viewers that, if they display coordinates at all, allow you to copy them. Some don't display this information at all, some only display it and don't even allow you to copy it, some open Google Maps when you click on it, where this information is also impossible to access or copy, and sometimes open some other maps — I don't know which, but it's not Google Maps. I had to go through every single one, about 25 viewers, that were on 4pda. Yes, I'm only looking at cracked apps. In my life, I think I've only paid for a PDF reader and an audio player for listening to podcasts downloaded offline, also for the amazing convenience, rare functionality, and very low cost of these programs (I know how much money this adds up to for IT professionals, one way or another). However, the free apps on Google Play that contain the necessary functionality turn out to be so "conditionally" free that they're simply unusable. They're simply spam boxes, one long, undisabled ad after another with every click, with every action — in short, completely unusable. Moreover, most of the apps are suspiciously similar. It looks like they're the same app, just different names, a slightly modified shell, and sometimes they couldn't be bothered to modify it. Basically, someone is simply spamming Google Play with identical apps under different names. And finally, after trying all 25 image viewers on 4pda, I found the one! It's perfect, displaying all meta tags and allowing you to copy them, and in the geodata section, it even has the address and coordinates stored in two formats! This miracle viewer is called F-Stop — it's a strange name, but it's a good viewer, no doubt about it. I can say I would have even bought it if I hadn't found a cracked one. I even wanted to write a review on Google Play, but Google Play wouldn't let me because, they said, I didn't download it from there. And there's one more small problem, which, nevertheless, hasn't been resolved for me for at least a year of actively processing photos. Mobile Lightroom for doesn't save geotags in processed photos. This is not an issue with the desktop version. You have to find the unprocessed version in the phone's folder with raw photos and copy it from there while you work with the processed one. Not fatal, but still a pain. But it turns out: "To save geotags from Lightroom mobile, you must use the "Export as..." option and ensure "Location Info" is toggled on in the export settings. Using the standard "Save copy to device" option may remove the location data." Damn it. That issue has been resolved, too. Why even bother creating such a problem in the first place? Oh well. So, all geotagging issues are resolved for now. "So, for God's sake, son, don't touch anything, don't change anything."*

* For English-speaking audiences, the original joke:

A programmer dad is sitting immersed in debugging a program. His young son asks:

"Dad, why does the sun rise in the east and set in the west?"

"Are you sure?"

"Sure."

"Was it like that yesterday?"

"Yes."

"So, for God's sake, son, don't touch anything, don't change anything!"