Ok, so everyone’s playing with the new iPhone 2.0 software, and taking photos, and embedding the location information into the EXIF.
Well early adopters in San Francisco are anyway, and here’s an interesting thing about San Francisco is that it’s at the same latitude as a bit of the Yellow Sea, just off the coast of China.
Example: San Francisco is 37.7 latitude, -122.4 longitude which puts it firmly in the Western Hemisphere. The same latitude but 122.4 longitude you end up just off the coast of China.
The Spec for GPS location in EXIF says that you’re not supposed to have any sign information on the latitude or longitude, so it’ll always be positive (i.e. the North Eastern Hemispheres) in the "GPS Latitude" and "GPS Longitude" fields (although some apps do add that information) The North/South East/West bit is supposed to be in the "GPS Latitude Ref" and "GPS Longitude Ref" fields.
But it seems at first glance, that the iPhone 2.0 software misses these fields out when writing EXIF data to the photo, so while everything else using Core-Location on the iPhone is super happy. Photos appear to be missing which Hemisphere they’re taken in.
And those photos taken in San Francisco, well, they think they’re in China … for the moment.
EXIF from iPhone
GPS Latitude 37 deg 45' 36.00"
GPS Longitude 122 deg 25' 48.00"
GPS Position 37 deg 45' 36.00", 122 deg 25' 48.00"
Missing EXIF Fields
GPS Latitude Ref North
GPS Longitude Ref East
Can anyone else confirm that there’s no North/South, East/West information in the EXIF, or is it hidden somewhere else and I’m just missing it?
