When we go on road trips, as the primary driver I love to snap photos of the sceneries and sometimes record videos of my drive, e.g. going up Mt Evans. I've bought a camera windshield mount for this purpose, and it works fairly well with my point-n-shoot camera. But I think it would be much more convenient to have a decent camera built into my standalone Garmin GPS unit itself, with traveler-friendly features such as geotagging, wireless bluetooth shutter release and camera control, and so on. Does anyone know if such a GPS device exists? Or am I way off base here? Perhaps smartphones equipped with both GPS and camera will make everything else redundant in the future?
There are many cameras with built-in GPS. There are some smart devices that have navigation and a camera. The real question is whether you will find one that does both well. Generally the GPS equipped cameras only use the GPS to tag photo locations. Camera equipped navigation devices generally have crappy cameras. I'm not an expert, but I don't think you will find one device that suites your needs. Tom
I think Tom pretty much nailed it - there are GPS units which include mediocre cameras - and also many good cameras which include GPS to tag photos with location data.
I found a Garmin Nuvi with a 3MP camera built-in, but not sure if it's still around. Doesn't appear to be very good quality camera. With the advent of GPS-enabled smartphones, I doubt there will ever be a market for a dedicated GPS with camera. The Camera with GPS option, on the other hand, seems to still have some life left. I think the GPS device market will eventually have to specialize in order to survive. For example: Altimeter, Barometer, Waterproof, etc.
There doesn't seem to be any reason why mid to high end consumer cameras can't have a useful built in GPS. I have one that will put lat and lon in the .jpg file. I would like to see them take advantage of the computing power and displays in cameras to also make them function as everyday GPSes. I expect that will happen in the next couple of years.
Now this Panasonic is pretty versatile for outdoors enthusiasts: http://panasonic.net/avc/lumix/compact/ts3_ft3/index.html
One issue with using a smartphone as a GPS is that if you do not have cell service, you probably don't have map service either. I know this is true with my iPhone - I tried it out at a trailhead and there was no map display on the iPhone because there was no cell service. My dedicated GPS (DeLorme PN-60) was receiving a 3D fix (good to about 3m or 10ft) but the phone was worthless at that location. Also, if you have a dedicated GPS unit that will store track info (basically it will take readings on a time interval and store the locations), you can sync your camera clock with the GPS and then you can find the location of any photo based on the time. I believe there are programs available that will combine the track file and the photo time(s) and then fill in the location data in the photo metadata. I haven't done this yet, but we discussed it in a GPS class that I took 2 years ago.
Some GPS apps allow you to pre-load maps into the phone so you don't have to have cell signals to get continual updates. This is particularly important for hiking and other outdoor recreations. In such environments the bigger issue would be battery life, IMO. But I like the idea of a rugged camera with GPS built in, especially if it also has an altimeter and barometer like the Lumix. Somehow that seems safer and more natural to use outdoor than a fragile smartphone. The phone as GPS solution seems better suited for urban uses and for traveling where signal coverage is good. But then you still have to be concerned with data usage etc.
