I get LOTS of enquiries via Geograph https://www.geograph.org.uk/
far more than iSpot
See https://www-acceptance.ispotnature.org/communities/uk-and-ireland/view/observation/859728/fern-for-id-please. Photos have correct location data in EXIF but this appears not to have been interpreted by iSpot. Phone used for photos was Fairphone 4 running Android version 12, latest update 5 July 2023.
Thanks for that, am sure Chris will have a look. Have you managed to change the copyright field for the images on the phone i.e. set the phone to automatically put the copyright as you? This seems to be possible on some phones but not others and not found one yet that does allow this.
Interesting. Just opened the full size image in Photoshop, which reports that image has no GPS data at all!
The app I used on my iPhone is simply called “EXIF”.
Added one of the photos to a Strava post then zoomed into the map and got …
Photo correctly located, indicating to me that the EXIF data is present.
I looked at the landscape version of the fern image and:
windows explorer showed that it was from fairphone and give the taking data i.e. shutterspeed etc, no copyright info and no location info.
breezebrowser showed none of the info
affinity photo said it should be able to read the metadata but even the help did not say how to get to the right menu so gave up.
dxo photolab5 read same data as windows.
Could try other programs but none of them that I have tried so far found the location info in this file. This does not mean it is not there but just that these programs have not found it.
Exiftool is another one to try
Using EXIF.tools (which is, as far as I can see, a web front-end for exiftool), I get, inter alia,
for the underside of the fern.
Is that the version of the image on ispot i.e. downloaded from ispot, I/Chris could check that too.
I have been fighting with exif/iptc for about 20 years and the short answer is that there are standards for where the info should be stored in images but the camera/software manufacturers don’t stick to the standards. There are two reasons some software/websites can read the data when others can’t, first they may by chance have looked in the right place in your file (but this will also mean they look in the wrong place in files from certain other cameras/phones/output of software), and second is that some software/websites put huge effort into looking in multiple places so do eventually find the data.
ispot uses a standard library to read the data so does not put in this huge effort as we don’t have the money to do that.
Yes, Mike, it is the same file. I only have the one version.
I often switch off my GPS Exif. It is not 100% accurate but sometimes is. Importantly it drains the camera (and phone) battery quite quickly.
I’d MUCH prefer to locate precisely via the iSpot Satellite location map.
I don’t think the time Exif (or frame numbers etc) can be switched off - only the on-image time-stamp
Do you need more tests of these things Mike? They are as easily tested in the Live Site.
Sadly I’ve not been able to read location data from HEIC/HEIF files - my only hope is that a more recent version of the relevant PHP library will be able to do so.
Meanwhile the staging and acceptance servers now have both a copyright text box (which is read from EXIF data, if present) and a Creative Commons checkbox. We’ve decided not to store the copyright text in the database - just leave it in the image - but will store the CC flag and if checked, display the relevant Creative Commons badge under the image.
I’ve just pushed a change to staging so now instead of the copyright notice under the image carousel in an observation record you now see the Creative Commons icon. Sadly its not taking any notice of the user’s settings yet!
Fairphone tell me that they use EXIF Version 2.2.
They wonder if some intermediate step between my computer and yours removes some of the EXIF data (perhaps to save space) or, less likely, if the program(s) you are using isn’t compatible with this version of EXIF.
The original file is now no longer processed in any way, so should retain any EXIF it started with. The “cuts” files (that’s a set of versions at smaller sizes) are created through PHP calls to either the GD or ImageMagick library and sadly both of them strip out all EXIF.
So …
… if I post a JPG photo taken with an Olympus TG6 the location data is correctly extracted and displayed (see, for example, https://www.ispotnature.org/communities/uk-and-ireland/view/observation/871120/egyptian-goose-alopochen-aegyptiaca)
… if I post a JPG photo taken with a FairPhone 4, the location data is NOT correctly extracted and displayed (see, for example, https://www-acceptance.ispotnature.org/communities/uk-and-ireland/view/observation/859737/mute-swan-cygnus-olor)
… if I send you the FairPhone photo by other means, you confirm that the location data is present
… other sites can locate the photo correctly (see, for example, Follow Ian on Strava to see this activity. Join for free.)
… the FairPhone uses EXIF Version 2.2
Can we explain why photos from the two cameras appear to be treated differently? What other tests can I carry out to help solve the problem?
Its all down to interpretation of the EXIF standards - and the camera/phone manufacturers haven’t all interpreted the standards in the same way.
I used to let the XIFF data generate the location from my iPhone and did not look closely enough at the position generated on the iSpot map. I was double checking an observation some time later and found quite some discrepancy from the position in maps and iSpot. I now generally generate the grid ref in an application and cut and paste.
Good move. I have been doing that for all my Observations over recent months and adding, where appropriate, “Location derived from my camera’s EXIF Data - usually very accurate” Where it is not I correct it and do not add the words.
My camera EXIF (Olympus TG3) can be several hundred metres out. The Location Sat map is ‘correct’ to a metre or two.
My phone is ‘accurate’ when out in the open. Poor in trees.
I often SWITH OFF GPS tagging (Exif) because is does drain the battery