I posted about this time last year that I was on the fence as far as purchasing a GoPro camera for my long bike trip I was planning for later in the year. Ultimately I did not get one to take with me. Fast forward to last December- I updated my iPhone 6 Plus by two model years to an iPhone 7 Plus, mainly for the improved camera and addition of water resistance. Because my old iPhone was in just about pristine shape ATT gave me an excellent trade in amount for it, and it just so happened that they had an incredible discounted price on the remaining GoPro Hero 4 Silvers they had in stock. So, for a couple of bucks, I wound up with a GoPro.

The thing is as finicky as I thought it was. The controls are not particularly intuitive and shooting, whether video or still, through a fisheye lens all the time takes some getting used to. The internal battery capacity is minuscule, so I pretty much right away had to go buy a couple of six hour battery backs to make the thing functional on longer rides. I finally decided on a helmet mounted setup, and am getting competent at using my iPhone to control it. I’ve decided that video of bike rides is pretty much not for me- things just go by too slowly on a road ride to make them compelling viewing for any length of time, and I’m not about to start putting hours into creating tightly edited shorts from a four or five hour ride. So I’m taking still photos with my GoPro.

I had to figure out how to aim the camera to eliminate the worst of the “goldfish bowl” effect of the fixed fisheye lens. I think I pretty much have that under control, but the photos still are no substitute for the composed ones that I can stop and take with the small Canon digital camera that I carry in my bag, or even my iPhone. But there’s a trade off, and I discovered this on last year’s ride. You just can’t stop every five minutes because there’s something you want to get a photo of. It breaks the momentum and eats into the time you have to get in the miles you want to travel that day. So GoPro it will be this year for a lot of my photos.

And there’s my remaining issue, and the reason for this post. Can anyone help me with the following two questions, please?

1. Friends have observed that my Strava photos are not geotagged, i.e. coded with the lat-lon coordinates that allows a program like Strava to locate where they they are taken along the ride. This is because I am importing them from the GoPro after the ride is complete and the GoPro, incredibly (at least IMHO) does not provide for this to be done. I mean, how hard could it be on a wildly (again IMHO) overpriced camera intended for use during active outdoor recreation that often involves travel from point A to point B to incorporate a basic GPS circuit that would geotag the photos? So, is there any sort of fix for this? A hardware fix, like some sort of GPS back (although it would need to incorporate an extended life battery as well to be truly useful, see above)? Or a software one, where the photo could be automatically sent to the iPhone, which would add the geotagging to it on they fly? If anyone has any advice or input on this I would love to hear it.

2. Failing a solution to #1 above, is there even just a way to get the iPhone and the GoPro to transfer photos taken by the GoPro automatically, as opposed to by the means of a batch download after the ride is complete? I use the GoPro program “Capture” to control the GoPro from the iPhone and to batch download photos currently, but cannot find anything in the program set up to make it do this. I have also looked on the ‘net and found nothing, which is usually a bad sign. Is there a 3rd party app solution? Again, I’d really hope someone has figured this out.

Thanks in advance for reading this long post, and for your thoughts to those who offer them.