Review on Enhance Your XF205, XF200, XA25, 📷 XA20 Professional Camcorder with Canon GP-E2 GPS Receiver by Nicholas Reggae

This device has two very good qualities, but a few bad ones. Pros: When connected to a Canon 5D III or 1DX, GPS data is inserted directly into the camera file, with no additional software required. so that the camera clock is accurate. It is important that the GPS and camera have the same time if you want the GPS data for the image to be accurate. Bad: 1. Accuracy is not as good as handheld GPS devices like the Garmin GPSmap 76CSx.2. The device can create a path log, but the only way to view it is by using the included software. This software can display the track or position of images but not at the same time. You have to switch between them. For me this is unacceptable.3. The device cannot be recognized by the computer and the software does not allow you to export the path log except in Goggle Earth.4 format. When the tracking log files are loaded into the software, they are stored in a location chosen by Canon and are very difficult to find. The files are saved as NMEA 0183 sentences and can be converted to GPX etc using an application such as GPSBable. The problem with this is that the NMEA 0183 files are corrupt and there can be no files with a token indicating the file is corrupt. I'm using the map module in Lightroom 4.1, which requires the tracking log files to be in GPX format. This means I can't use this device and view the track. Due to these issues I am returning the device as I write this.WilEdit The time has come and the bird has flown and a miracle has happened for GP-E2 and Lightroom or any other app that needs proper tracking log files. Here's the story.1. GP-E2 can create tracking log files on the device itself. To access everything in the GP-E2, you must use the included Map Utility application. This includes creating a tracking log file on the computer. It writes this log file under Documents > My Documents > Canon Utilities > GPS Log Files in Windows. He is doing very well.2. The GP-E2 specs indicate the files are NMEA 0183 sentences, and they appear to be, but there's a big problem. Each track location will be marked as invalid by Map Utility, rendering these files unusable in applications other than Map Utility.3. Lightroom and many other photo applications require a different file type. Lightroom requires a GPX file, so GP-E2 log files cannot be used in Lightroom, even if they are valid NMEA 0183.4 files. A universal application for converting such files to other formats is GPSBable. Just use GPSBable to convert GP-E2 NMEA 0183 files to GPX files and use them in Lightroom. The GPSBable converted the files fine, but the problem was that only the header and trailer of the file were converted since each of the GP-E2 track positions was marked as invalid and the GPSBable respected that tag. At least one other person besides me has contacted the author of GPSBable regarding this issue. In about two weeks he released an updated version of GPSBable that fixed this problem and GPSBable now converts corrupted GP-E2 NMEA 0183 files to one of the many other formats GPSBable supports. This is really a wonderful job.6. Before GPSBable fixed the problem, the only way to compare the tracks created by the GP-E2 and my Garmin GPSmap 76CSX was to view the GP-E2 track in Map Utility and the track created with my 76CSX in Lightroom. Lightroom tracks from 76CSX have always been the most accurate.7. I can now view the converted GP-E2 tracks in Lightroom and they appear identical to the tracks created on my 76CSX. Photo locations were always "GPS accurate", indicating the GP-E2 is a good GPS.8. GPS accuracy is determined by the number of satellites used, the quality of position calculation based on information about these satellites, and the time interval of readings. For more accuracy, set the time interval to one second. With this setting, it's easy to see that the track is accurate between +/- 10 feet and +/- 20 feet. You can't get close to that with a civilian GPS.9. Thanks to the work done by GPSBable, my rating for this device is up to 4 stars. It would be 5 stars if the GP-E2 initially generates the correct GPX files. If you have a Canon camera that runs this device, I highly recommend it if you follow the instructions in this edited review.