This post starts a series devoted to sharing tips and tricks on how to get the best of using GPS units on Nikon platform. In this post we will find out which of the Nikon DSLR cameras are compatible with GPS units.
Nikon cameras have been compatible with GPS receivers for quite a while – to my knowledge, Nikon was the first to introduce a camera that could accept an incoming GPS signal and accompany images with resulting geotags. Other brands are slowly catching up, but so far no other professional DSLRs offer GPS-related flexibility that can be compared to Nikon DSLRs.
The first Nikon DSLR to have an input for GPS signals was D1H. It had a separate terminal for GPS connection, and this tradition has been continued in D1X. Then quite surprisingly for many, the GPS support has been stripped from the D2H. Nikon probably got enough complaints about that move – so with the release of Nikon D2Hs, the GPS support has been reintroduced, and since then it has never been dropped from the Nikon professional DSLR lineup.
Until recently the only Nikon DSLRs that could make use of GPS information for geotagging were models equipped with 10-pin accessory terminal (except D1H and D1X that used a different connector). Most users only use the 10-pin terminal for remote release, but the latter only requires 3 pins – and the other 7 just asked to be put to a good use. Nikon made what they probably thought was a wise move by getting rid of a fairly common GPS connector in D1H and D1X, and assigning a few 10-pin connector contacts for that role. The immediate result was that until relatively recently, rather few companies ventured into attempting to produce Nikon-compatible GPS receivers – simply because it required making a 10-pin compatible connector, which is anything but common. Nikon’s position was clear – we want to make extra money by making all accessories in-house vs. letting others ride that train. Well, it didn’t really work out – it took Nikon almost a full decade to come up with their own standalone unit (the GP-1), and meanwhile users had to do away with clumsy setup consisting of Nikon MC-35 cord and a (hopefully) compatible, bulky and expensive third-party receiver. I sure wouldn’t want to carry that setup around for long.
Fortunately, the 10-pin connector issue has been eventually resolved, and third party GPS units started showing up on the market. And recently Nikon made a great move by introducing the GPS support in their mid-level cameras, starting with Nikon D90 and continued with D5000. Although they invented yet another connector to feed GPS signals into these cameras (also shared with remote shutter release functionality), so the whole story about connector compatibility has begun once again.
At the time of writing this post, the following Nikon cameras are compatible with GPS:
- Obsolete GPS connector: Nikon D1H, D1X
- 10-pin terminal: Nikon D200, D300, D700, D2Hs, D2X, D2Xs, D3, D3X
- “D90 terminal”: Nikon D90, D5000.
The current version of the Promote® GPS is compatible with “10-pin terminal” cameras above, and we are working to support the “D90 terminal” cameras as well. Internally, GPS support in all above cameras is pretty much the same, but some of those cameras have extra features that may significantly affect your geotagging experience. In my future posts I will describe those features in more detail, and will give a few simple answers to questions about the following:
- conserving camera battery power when using a GPS receiver
- enhancing GPS satellite reception
- ensuring quick GPS signal reacquisition after a short break
- any other questions you might have.
Feel free to comment this post to ask any questions you want answered, and stay tuned 
I’d like to pint out a little mistake, if I may. The Nikon D1x aso uses the 10-pin connector. I ought to know because I used it with the MC-35 and Etrex Vista
Maybe D1X can accept GPS signal from both 10 pin and the 2.5mm jack? Here is an interesting article from a guy who made a DIY GPS cable for D1X using a 2.5mm jack:
http://www.pfranc.com/projects/g45contr/nikon.htm
I have a GeoPic II – its much better than the other GPS-in-a-box solutions out there as it has three modes of operation including a proper low power mode and a freeze mode for indoors.
Check it out: http://www.customidea.com
Thanks for your comment, Dave! I’m sure it’s a good product, but as per BHPhotoVideo listing, it’s almost twice as expensive. Not everybody is shooting with a GPS indoors, especially if you have to pay such an extra for this
Every product has its niche, and ours seems to fit the bill for a lot of people. Also, I didn’t see a Nikon D90 compatible version in GeoPic’s product range.
I’ve been searching for a good GPS solution for my D90 for a while now. I was very disappointed when I discovered that Eye-Fi didn’t use “real” GPS (although I had been suspecting it)… The GP-1 is prohibitively expensive ($220). Come on… That’s too much to spend on metadata. And now that I’ve mustered up the courage to look into DIY solutions, I find out that my camera requires an extra special amount of attention. It’s like I’m not meant to ever get geotagging going.
So, can someone tell me whether it’s feasible to get my HI-204III GPS receiver working with my D90? The receiver uses the NMEA protocol, and works fine on my computer, but connects via USB (it has a strange little black box along the cable, which, along with the computer saying something like /dev/usbserial/, makes me think that it converts the serial connector into a USB connector (I don’t really understand this stuff)).
I have a tiny bit of DIY electronics experience, but (at the moment) very limited access to tools such as soldering guns, ohmmeters, etc…
Hi Sean,
It’s hard to say whether your receiver will work with the D90. There are different versions of the NMEA protocol, and to make things more complicated, Nikon cameras require some special formatting. Not to mention that D90 uses a proprietary connector to receive GPS signals. I would recommend trying to experiment with a GPS without your camera at first – it’s a pretty expensive test bench. You may want to try using our GPS-N-90 unit as your geotagging solution for now – and keep on hacking your GPS module at your spare time
It surely is fun!
Thanks for your reply, Arty.
I think I’m going to settle for the solution of buying a GPS logger, and, when I want to geotag photos, I’ll look at what my position was at whatever time I took a given photo, and do it manually. I’ve been told that there’s software that automates this process, and can do it for RAW files, too. I don’t take lots of photos, and I usually isolate a very small number of them from the rest, to undergo a long post-production process. So if I take 200 photos in a day, I’ll later work on as little as 20 of them. And out of those 20, there are probably 10 that I really like, and those are the only ones I would really care about geotagging. And I would really only care about geotagging if I took pictures while hiking. In that situation, it can be pretty cool to see the location you photographed on Google Earth. But if you’re showing photos of Paris to a relative, they really don’t expect you to say anything more specific than “at a museum,” “in a square,” or “by some church,” when asked about where you took a picture.
But back to the original discussion… So, I understand GPS more than less. I own a GPS receiver which is useless without a computer, a GPS navigation system built into my car, and a handheld GPS navigation system. I think a blind, dumb GPS data logger which I can sync with my computer after I’ve taken all of my photos would complete my collection.
In the end, I want to have this automatic geotagging working (although I don’t want it so badly as not to consider more practical solutions). But what do you mean by “special formatting?” As for the proprietary connector cable… I think it has no relationship with the actual GPS device itself, and I could get it working with my GPS receiver. I could just buy it off someone who bought a GP-1 for their D300 (or any other camera which doesn’t employ the cruelly different port the D90 does (these people will end up with a useless cable on their hands)).
Sorry about the length of my reply…
Hi Sean,
When considering what we call “offline” geotagging, i.e. a GPS log that you will later use to sync to your images, you would want to make absolutely sure that your camera clock is synchronized to the GPS clock (which is a very good, precise clock to sync to by the way). The images are matched to the GPS log by the date/time stamp, so they have to be in perfect sync to make sure your tags will be correct. A part of that issue is making sure that you don’t just keep your camera clock precise, but if you move from one time zone to another, you will need to switch the in-camera timezone as well. GPS logger will switch its timezone anyway when it finds itself on a new position, so unless you update the in-camera timezone, the tracking will get unbalanced. I do quite a bit of hiking, and sometimes I found myself leaving my camera clock at a setting that was two states and 400 miles ago
Unfortunately I’m not allowed to talk at length about the technical issues as it’s a part of our internal works. In regards to online vs. offline geotagging though – it is not about a certain device – it’s a process that can and should be chosen carefully depending on your needs. If your workflow works better with a logger, just don’t forget to consider the above to make sure it does work well for you.
I got a Promote GPS for my D5000 from Adorama. I connected the GPS to the camera and switched both the camera and GPS on. I could see the “GPS” signal blinking and it never stopped blinking even after 15-20 minutes in a nice outdoor environment. I felt that the equipment was defective and replaced it with a new one. The new is also behaving the same manner. Is there something that I may be doing wrongly or is there something more that I may need to do?
Thanks
Please kindly submit a support ticket to our helpdesk at:
http://support.promotesystems.com/
Thanks!