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Geotagging with a Nikon and SnapBridge

Carrying around a second GPS unit is now a thing of the past thanks to Nikon’s SnapBridge. The Bluetooth based system uses little energy and offers the ability to geotag any photographs captured by a SnapBridge enabled camera with no effort. Simply turn on the camera, open the app on your iOS or Android phone and let the magic happen.

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By Scott

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400 comments

  1. My experience is that the D850 always looses contact with Snapbridge and it’s almost impossible to reconnect. Says “Waiting for Bluetooth connection. The camera is off”, which it isn’t.
    My phone is an up to date Xperia XZ1.

    Only way to reconnect is to remove the camera from Snapbridge and reconnect it. The it works for a few shots. As soon as I leave them for a few minutes the disconnect and won’t connect again.

  2. two questions:
    1) is there an alternative to snapbridge
    2) is geotagging continuous? ie. if I take a pic and walk a 100 yards will each pic have its own (different) location? I’ve read that it downloads a locate for use over the nest hour.

  3. I have just bought a Z6 and connected it to my iPhone 6S using Snapbridge (accuracy set to Low). I do get geotagging/GPS-coordinates while I’m walking around in a large garden. However, the GPS coordinates jump all around me from picture to picture (some pretty accurate and the next one may be several 100 meters wrong). I also use my phone to plot itineraries when I don’t see this behaviour.
    Any idea what might cause this?

    1. My guess is because you have the accuracy set to low. In that setting, you need to move very far to see a location change. Low uses cell towers only for location, not actually GPS.

      1. Hi Scott,
        Thanks for your response. I had lost your website URL so couldn’t check your answer. :-(

        Today I did a test. I walked for about 1 kilometer and recorded GPS locations in 3 ways: 1a) first half with iPhone/SnapBridge combination set to low; 1b) 2nd half with SnapBridge set to High and all the way I recorded my itinerary with an app on 2) my iPhone (MyTracks) and 3) a separate GPS data logger. Along the way I shot some 10-15 photo’s.

        I then created 3 sets of photos: one with GPS data stored by SnapBridge and exported/imported the GPS data from my iPhone and the data logger (used View NX-i to match the time/location data).
        For SnapBridge it did not matter whether the accuracy was set to High or Low … it was just hit and miss whether the location was accurate or not (although I didn’t see the huge deviations I had seen before on a longer trip).
        For both the iPhone app and the GPS data logger I could not see deviations of more than 1-2 meters (say about max 6 feet).

        I have been looking around to see whether others have similar experience but I have not come across this so far.

  4. Hi! I just bought Coolpix A1000. Geotagging with SnapBridge is not working. On SnapBridge app I received location and is showed correctly. But images doesn’t have geotag.
    Any hints what is wrong or is just bug?

  5. Hi Scott, all,
    Does the Snapbridge App have to be actively opened in order to record location data? The app was running and I had the phone on me, but no location data is recorded in the pictures. The app told me a few times over the course of today that it was running in the background allowing location data to be collected, but there’s no geotag on the actual pictures :(. I have a few from the past few days with the location data, none whatsoever from today though.
    Thanks!
    Martina.

    1. You will have to have the app open with background updating enabled. Otherwise, if the app is not in the foreground it won’t run. You likely need it to allow notifications too. Of course, it also needs access to wifi, cell and bluetooth features.

      1. Also.. if the phone is an iPhone,you HAVE to make sure that the app is set to ALWAYS be allowed to use location setting. The other option is “WHEN USING THE APP” and if the app goes to the background then you aren’t “using the app” so then it won’t be allowed location data.

          1. Do you also have the “send while off” option enabled on your camera? I have found that GPS tagging only works when the app is active and the camera is on, and within range. (I’m using a Z6.) But to conserve battery, I set “send while off” to off. I also have the camera set to go into standby mode after 20 seconds, so the bottom line is that I can only get consistent GPS tagging under these specific conditions: app running, camera connected, camera on. Then it usually works.

          2. Yes, I have it set to keep sending even if the app is in the background (but still open). If you close the app completely then it won’t send the data.

  6. Hello,
    I have Nikon’s GP-1 gps dongle that I used with my DSLRs, but now that I’m using a Z5 I’d like to conserve its battery by using Snapbridge and bluetooth. However, for some reason my Z5 is just not talking to my iPhone 8 via Snapbridge. Maybe its something thats not possible on the Z5?

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