V1.02
Thom Hogan’s Complete Guide to the Nikon D300
Page 453
To use GPS on the D300:
1.
Connect the cable(s) from GPS to camera with both
units turned off.
2.
Turn your GPS unit on, if necessary (some custom
units draw power automatically from the camera). The
Dawn Tech unit I use has two options,
On
and
Auto
,
the latter option follows the camera’s power switch.
Note that every time the GPS powers down, it will
need time to acquire the satellite signals again, so the
setting of
Auto
isn’t always the best choice.
3.
Turn the camera’s Power switch to
On
.
4.
You’ll see the
GPS
icon on the top LCD blink until the
GPS unit has obtained connection to enough satellites
to have a reliable signal. GPS data is only stored for
images when this icon has stopped blinking and
appears steady in the D300’s top LCD.
Any time the camera loses the signal from the GPS unit for
more than two seconds, the
GPS
icon will go away and GPS
information will no longer be recorded. Make sure that your
GPS isn’t set to an auto-off setting. However, you
can
take
pictures when the GPS hasn’t yet acquired or has lost the
satellite signal; those pictures just won’t have GPS data in the
EXIF fields.
Unlike the D200, the GPS data in the D300 EXIF fields is not
truncated in the last digit of the seconds field, which means
that it provides the highest possible accuracy.
A word of warning: if you’ve got a GPS plugged into the 10-
pin connector on the D300, as long as power is being drawn
off the connector the camera’s batteries are being drained.
Some third party GPS units draw power off the camera all the
time, some have automatic power-save options, and Nikon’s
own cable draws a bit of power as long as it is connected to
the camera.
