I'm going to be travelling quite a bit and I've been thinking of getting a GPS unit for my D700. The generic ones on B&H get poor reviews, and there's some on ebay for about $80.
Anyone have personal experience with any of the non-Nikon offerings?
I have an Aokatec Bluetooth adapter which is nice because the actual GPS receiver can be separate from the camera, and you can buy as nice or as cheap a receiver as you want. I've been very pleased with it - accurate, with very little consumption out of the camera.
I may give one of the new Akoatec integrated receivers a shot when I do my next hiking trip so I have one fewer batteries to keep track of.
I use a Dawntech M3L-S3. Do your research, but this was by far the best option available (for me) when I bought it a few years ago. The ridiculously long cable of the Nikon GP-1 ruled out that model for me.
Good things about the Dawntech M3L-S3:
• well-designed, high-quality cable of appropriate length (what on earth was Nikon thinking with the GP-1?)
• runs off camera battery
• embeds GPS data directly into raw files
• can embed coordinates of last known point, i.e. the front door of a cathedral for all indoor shots
• SiRFstarIII chip (low power, quick, extremely sensitive)
• no ‘nonsense’ features like LCD screen, compass, etc., which don’t add anything useful or don’t work properly (compass)
Bad points:
• not rainproof
• usual flimsy and ill-fitting moulded plastic construction of cheap Chinese electronics (despite the price, which I think was $170 at the time); however, the other options including the GP-1 were as bad or even worse
• literally unusable software for setting preferences of operation (at least on a Mac). I've just accepted the default operation, which is fine
I considered various Bluetooth + GPS receiver combos, but in the end I rejected them because of the likely hassle of charging batteries, dealing with sync issues, etc. There were also quality issues when I looked at these (Bluetooth receivers falling out of the 10-pin port because they didn't screw onto the thread but instead relied on a press-fit, etc.).
My Dawntech M3L-S3 has seen a lot of use and still works well. Of course, I’d much rather Nikon would adopt a built-in GPS receiver like the Canon EOS 6D. Dealing with an external GPS receiver is a huge hassle, and that’s why your number-one priority when choosing one should be to minimise that hassle.
