topic Re: EOS R6 Mark II Camera GPS Location Off by Miles in EOS DSLR & Mirrorless Cameras

EOS R6 Mark II Camera GPS Location Off by Miles

WSC33 — Mon, 22 Jul 2024 20:39:09 GMT

I have an EOS R6 Mark 11 connected to my iPhone 13 for GPS. The camera GPS is always off by several miles. Obviously, my iPhone can locate me within a few feet. Why the huge discrepancy?

Thanks.

Re: EOS R6 Mark II Camera GPS Location Off by Miles

shadowsports — Mon, 22 Jul 2024 21:34:57 GMT

Greetings,

Suggest you check the Canon Connect App permissions and ensure Location is allowed.

Re: EOS R6 Mark II Camera GPS Location Off by Miles

WSC33 — Mon, 22 Jul 2024 22:35:30 GMT

I assume you mean “do I have location access,” and of course yes. I would have no GPS if it weren’t. (The GPS indicator on the camera flashes if you forget to turn on the app, right?) It does disconnect if my camera times out which is annoying and the object of a later question, but yes, if I understand your question, I am accessing location from the app. Is this what you meant?

Re: EOS R6 Mark II Camera GPS Location Off by Miles

WSC33 — Tue, 23 Jul 2024 23:42:09 GMT

Hey Rick,

How do I do this? What should I look for? The status says "Sending to camera", 'Smartphone,' 'Can be used.' What are App permissions?

Re: EOS R6 Mark II Camera GPS Location Off by Miles

shadowsports — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 03:20:24 GMT

Android and iOS allow you approve or deny the permissions installed apps on your devices. Android does it a little better than iOS.

App permissions allow you to specify on a granular level if an app can (for example) access you microphone, your camera, your images, your location, etc.

Have you reviewed your images. Does GPS/Location information get included with your EXIF data. Look in the image properties.

Re: EOS R6 Mark II Camera GPS Location Off by Miles

WSC33 — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 13:01:38 GMT

Hey Shadow,

Yes, it's in the EXIF data. Where else would I see the GPS data? It only appears there, right? I'm new to this, so I didn't know. But yes, it's in the EXIF.

Thanks.

Re: EOS R6 Mark II Camera GPS Location Off by Miles

FloridaDrafter — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 18:20:35 GMT

I've never used the GPS features in a camera or phone but I've used GPS for high precision surveying and mapping (ESRI Arc GIS and AutoCAD Land Desktop) quite a bit and the only time I've seen my coordinates off by miles is when I had the wrong format selected, like decimal degrees (DDs) instead of degrees-minutes-seconds (DMS) or vice versa. For example, my receiver was outputting DDs and I was trying to map in DMS.

You may want to research what format the camera uses and make sure the phone is using the same.

Just a thought 🤔

Newton

Re: EOS R6 Mark II Camera GPS Location Off by Miles

WSC33 — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 18:04:35 GMT

That's a good point. Mine seem to be in DMS but the website i'm using (https://gps-coordinates.org/) is truncating my entires, so maybe those digits are being lost. Both lat and long are 7 digits long out of my camera. The lat and longiture are truncated to at most 4 positions. Do you have a suggestion for a site allowing more detail?

Re: EOS R6 Mark II Camera GPS Location Off by Miles

kvbarkley — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 18:19:17 GMT

Just type them into google.

Re: EOS R6 Mark II Camera GPS Location Off by Miles

WSC33 — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 20:14:35 GMT

How do I structure it in the proper format for DMS?

Re: EOS R6 Mark II Camera GPS Location Off by Miles

WSC33 — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 21:25:23 GMT

kvbarkley: how do I label and separate the data? Commas, descriptors, or what?

Re: EOS R6 Mark II Camera GPS Location Off by Miles

kvbarkley — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 22:41:03 GMT

Where I took this photo:

Re: EOS R6 Mark II Camera GPS Location Off by Miles

WSC33 — Sat, 27 Jul 2024 16:05:20 GMT

Hey,

Thanks so much. I can do it but not correctly with my data.

The GPS data from my Canon seems to be in DMS format. Correct?

This is the actual GPS of my address I pulled off of Google:

Actual GPS: AA°BB'22.1"N DD°EE'46.1"W

Here's the GPS location data from my Canon from a pic shot from home:

It appears in the metadata as 0AA,BB.3670000N and 0DD,EE.7700999W

So my home address and the GPS from my Canon match (with a lead zero) except for the seconds. I can't configure the Canon GPS data in Google for the seconds in a way that doesn't produce an error. How do I do configure the seconds? (Where does the decimal go?) And longitude is a long number.

Thanks again.

Re: EOS R6 Mark II Camera GPS Location Off by Miles

kvbarkley — Tue, 30 Jul 2024 21:14:41 GMT

Just in case you are still out there...

Most GPS is formatted as either deg, min, sec.sec, or Deg.deg. That is with fractional degrees or fractional seconds.

Yours is formatted with fractional *minutes*, which is a bit odd.

With the help of my Prime, I figured out how to convert it.

So, somehow, AA°BB'22.1"N is equivalent to 0AA,BB.3670000N.

To convert it, take the fractional part of the minutes and multiply by 60 to turn it into seconds:

.367 * 60 = 22.02, which is pretty close to 22.1 seconds.

It also works for the other:

.7700999 * 60 = 46.206, again, pretty close to 46.1.

Re: EOS R6 Mark II Camera GPS Location Off by Miles

WSC33 — Wed, 31 Jul 2024 14:14:34 GMT

Wow. You are my hero. I'm out of town but when I get home, I'll test it out. Thanks SOOO much....

Re: EOS R6 Mark II Camera GPS Location Off by Miles

WSC33 — Sun, 04 Aug 2024 20:42:38 GMT

This works really well. When I put in the seconds as they calculated in the gps-coordinates.org website, I got my home address exactly but the seconds changed to something else:

Lat: 22.02 became 22.0194

Lon: 46.206 became 46.05

… and my address pops up. Why is that?

Thanks again!

Re: EOS R6 Mark II Camera GPS Location Off by Miles

kvbarkley — Mon, 05 Aug 2024 13:07:09 GMT

Either some weird round off, or they only return certain GPS coordinates, say every 100 feet or so.

Re: EOS R6 Mark II Camera GPS Location Off by Miles

shadowsports — Mon, 05 Aug 2024 13:43:33 GMT

Excellent thread guys!

Re: EOS R6 Mark II Camera GPS Location Off by Miles

vantage — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 16:38:51 GMT

@WSC33

Another thing to consider is the resolution of the location stamped on images. You have to move a minimum distance to change second of latitude or longitude.

From

https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/how-much-distance-does-a-degree-minute-and-second-cover-your-maps

A degree, minute, or second of latitude remains fairly constant from the equator to the poles; however a degree, minute, or second of longitude can vary greatly as one approaches the poles and the meridians converge.

At 38 degrees North latitude (which passes through Stockton California and Charlottesville Virginia):

One degree of latitude equals approximately 364,000 feet (69 miles), one minute equals 6,068 feet (1.15 miles), and one-second equals 101 feet.
One-degree of longitude equals 288,200 feet (54.6 miles), one minute equals 4,800 feet (0.91 mile), and one second equals 80 feet.

IOW since the GPS coordinates from the Canon Connect App only go down to the second, if you're at the same latitude as Stockton or Charlottesville, any location stamped on the image can be off by 101 feet in latitude and 80 feet in longitude.

Re: EOS R6 Mark II Camera GPS Location Off by Miles

kvbarkley — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 23:00:38 GMT

"coordinates from the Canon Connect App only go down to the second,"

I believe they have fractional seconds to get more resolution.