GPS

Getting on-camera GPS working for the Nikon D850
Updated: October 24, 2024
Nikon GPS
* Image from d600.org

Some people call me nuts, but I like having geotags on every shot I take, and so far, I have tried multiple on-camera GPS units with varying levels of success. The one that so far has lasted the longest is the Nikon GP-1A, and even that has been driving me nuts.

Talking of driving me nuts, the issues I have had with the GP-1A have been interesting, with the most common being not being able to lock on to the GPS satellites, and that's while being outside with nothing to block the signal.

Then comes the really annoying issue, where it would lock on, but the coordinates returned would be way off; for example, on one trip to Singapore, the geotag on a photo was >20km out. Yuk comes to mind.

The way forward is a no-brainer: replace it, but with what?

Nikon no longer makes an on-camera GPS, seeming to prefer to use the GPS on your phone via the SnapBridge application used for remote camera control, image downloads etc.

Yes, I have tried this, and while it does work, for me anyway, it is flakey, and yes, that's with my high-end Samsung phone.

For me, it seems to lock on to the GPS system most of the time, er, well, outside anyway. Inside forget about it, not that I am expecting much when inside, but outside in the open air without anything to block the satellite signal, I expect things to work.

To me, I could use it and live with the times I get no usable geotags, but there are other options for on-camera GPS devices. So, it's time to look at these.

As I said before, Nikon does not make anything anymore, so they are of no use. After some extensive googling and reading way too many reviews, it seems there are two options.

Solmeta makes a unit that is fairly similar to the Nikon one and runs on the camera hot shoe. Which from reading many reviews, seems to work well. The downside of this option is the cost and maybe, as some of the reviews claim, the battery life.

di-GPS
* Image from dawntech.co.uk

Then comes the di-GPS, which has a very different design, not being a hot shoe device but rather a very small device that attaches to the camera 10 pin port and even passes it through.

From the reviews, it seems the only real issue with this thing is how the lock nut works, making it hard to lock into the camera's 10-pin connector. Other than that, it seems it works as advertised, and even the battery life is not an issue.

Ok, given it was cheaper than the Solmeta offerings, I made the decision to get one of these, which is where the problems started.

I live in Sydney, and the di-GPS website did not have any deals on who sells these things outside of Europe.

Oh well, they do have an email address, so I dropped them an email asking for the resellers, etc.

Another problem, the email bounced back with the error being "high probability of being spam". It's not a good sign, and as someone who has been in IT for decades, it's more than a little scary.

After some googling, it seems that there is one reseller in Europe who was out of stock, and other than that, no one sold these things, yes, not even Amazon....

The only place to actually buy these things is from the dawntech.co.uk website, which, given the state of it, did not fill me with confidence. But I still wanted one of these, so I decided, after more googling and considering the downside of putting my credit card into a site on the other side of the planet, I ended up doing the deed and placing the order.

The experience dealing with this site on the other side of the planet was actually way better than expected. I got shipping confirmation emails with tracking, and the shipping was actually quicker than some of the orders I have made to Australian companies.

Anyhow, before this turns into a review, the device has arrived and was installed on my D850, and yes, the review that talked about issues with the lock nut on the 10-pin connection was dead right. It took much bad language and fiddling to get it locked onto the camera.

And yes, I have sent another email to the dawntech.co.uk site persons with feedback on the issues with the site, products thats do not seem to exist, broken links, etc. Let's see if I ever get any response, never know, and at least my email did not bounce with "suspected spam".

This coming weekend, I am going to head out and see how the di-GPS works on my D850; depending on how this goes, I may write a full review.

Watch this space for updates.

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