If you work in the field and need to prove exactly where a photo was taken, you’ve probably noticed your phone’s default camera isn’t reliable for documentation.
I learned this firsthand as an office coordinator working with field teams. We took tons of jobsite photos. Every week I had to build reports and manually label each one with its location. Pictures came from everywhere: messages, WhatsApp, emails, Google Drive. I had to download them, check whether the metadata still existed, and re-tag everything manually. GPS metadata often gets stripped during sharing, and even when it survives, matching each photo to the correct site is slow and error-prone.
I knew there had to be a better way. That’s when I started researching GPS camera apps. Instead of relying on fragile metadata, these apps stamp the time, date, and GPS location directly onto photos. In this article, we’ll look at 5 best GPS camera apps for fieldwork and answer the most common questions about GPS tagging.
Table of Contents:
- Timemark Camera: All-in-One for Field Teams
- Solocator: Popular Choice for Surveying and Engineering
- GPS Map Camera: Good for Casual Use and Non-Strict Field Documentation
- Timestamp Camera: Fast, Simple Time & Location Stamps
- Conota (Formerly SpotLens): Professional Surveying Camera
1. Timemark Camera: All-in-One for Field Teams
Timemark Camera is a powerful yet easy-to-use GPS camera app designed with fieldwork in mind. It automatically stamps the time, date, GPS coordinates, and address on each photo you take. You can even include extra details like weather, altitude, compass direction, custom notes, or company logo.
One thing that sets Timemark apart is its focus on professional use. Timemark is the only GPS camera app that validates the time and location data to prevent any tampering. This ensures the credibility of your photo records. And unlike many standalone GPS camera apps that only save photos on your phone, Timemark offers a centralized cloud workspace (Teamspace) that syncs photos across your entire team. This keeps all field images organized and instantly accessible, with no manual collection or sorting.
Pros:
- Tamper-proof date, time, and GPS stamps
- Additional stamp options: notes, logo, weather, altitude, and more
- Photos auto-upload to a shared cloud workspace (when signed in)
- Real-time team visibility with photos grouped by project, member, and date
- Captures GPS offline and syncs photos automatically when back online
- Shareable, professional looking templates for consistent reporting
- Easy reporting: PDF, Excel, KMZ, ZIP, live project link
Cons:
- Paid subscription required for larger cloud storage
- Might feel feature-heavy for casual, non-work users
Download:
2. Solocator: Popular Choice for Surveying and Engineering
Solocator is a well-known GPS camera app widely used in construction, surveying, inspections, and engineering. The base app is free, but many advanced features, like additional coordinate formats, customizable fields, and enhanced export capabilities, are available only in the paid Industry Pack.
Solocator’s camera stamps GPS coordinates, compass direction, altitude, date, and time directly on photos. It also lets you add project names, notes, and user details, which is helpful for field documentation. One handy feature is that it can save two versions of each photo: one with the overlay for reporting and one without text for clean archival.
Pros
- Very accurate GPS, compass, and elevation data
- Industry Pack adds robust professional features (project fields, user fields, export options)
- Supports multiple coordinate formats used in surveying and engineering
Cons
- Many advanced features require the Industry Pack upgrade (iOS)
- Paid app on Android
- No built-in cloud storage or real-time collaboration
- Interface feels older compared to more modern apps
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3. GPS Map Camera: Good for Casual Use and Non-Strict Field Documentation
GPS Map Camera is a popular Android app that, as its name suggests, puts a map and GPS info onto your photos. This way, you see the location visually and in text form on your picture. It’s a favorite among travelers and casual users who want to memorialize the location visited. Some field users rely on it for basic location tagging as well.
What’s nice is the level of customization it offers for the map and info layout. GPS Map Camera includes a bunch of templates to style the location stamp. For instance, you can choose a normal roadmap, satellite imagery, or terrain map background for the stamp. It also gives you flexibility in how you format file names and layout stamps, which is helpful if you want a consistent style.
Pros
- Multiple preset stamp layouts available
- Highly customizable map and text overlays
- Flexible file naming options
- Easy to use for quick, simple location-stamped photos
Cons
- Intrusive ads in the free version
- No team management, reporting, or cloud workspace
- Location and time stamps are not tamper-proof
- Not ideal for professional or compliance-driven field documentation
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4. Timestamp Camera: Fast, Simple Time & Location Stamps
Timestamp Camera by Susamp Apps is a simple, fast, and reliable app for adding real-time date, time, and GPS location to your photos and videos. Like GPS Map Camera, its main strength is clarity: the timestamp and location are burned directly onto the image as you shoot, making it useful for both casual and professional use.
Timestamp Camera offers dozens of format options for date/time and allows customizing the font, text color, and position of the stamp. It even has modes like adding a small compass or a weather reading to give your photos more context.
Pros
- Works for photo AND video
- Customization options available
- Lightweight and easy to use
Cons
- Intrusive ads in the free verision
- No cloud storage or project-level organization
- No verification features or anti-tampering
- Interface feels dated
Download:
5. Conota (Formerly SpotLens): Professional Surveying Camera
Conota, formerly SpotLens, is a camera app tailored for engineers, surveyors, and construction pros. Much like Solocator, Conota will tag photos with coordinates, altitude, address, date and time, etc., but it has a few extra tricks up its sleeve for technical users.
One standout feature: it can measure distances and areas based on the GPS points you mark in photos. For instance, you take photos from different points on a site, Conota helps calculate the distance between those points or even the area of a polygon formed by multiple geotagged shots. This is quite useful in large sites or environmental surveys where you want approximate measurements without doing a separate survey.
Conota also allows you to save GPS coordinates in lists or files inside the app. This means you can create, say, a list of all checkpoint photos for Project X and have their coordinates stored together. This makes it easy to export the GPS coordinates into GIS software later.
Pros:
- Includes distance and area measurements based on GPS points
- Records altitude, bearing, and high-accuracy coordinates
- Allows saving GPS points in lists or exporting them
- For more technical users who want precision and extra analysis tools
Cons:
- Limited features available in the free version
- Interface is more technical. Steeper learning curve
- No cloud workspace or team workflow
Download:
Final thoughts
In the end, GPS camera apps are about making your photo documentation actually believable. I’ve spent enough time sorting jobsite photos to know that relying on metadata alone is a gamble you usually lose. When you need photos to stand as proof, a proper GPS camera app saves you time, prevents mistakes, and removes the back-and-forth that comes when someone questions where or when a photo was taken. If you just want memories, any simple app works. But if your photos end up in reports, inspections, or client conversations, choosing a tool like Timemark built for field teams gives you clarity, consistency, and peace of mind.
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