Digital Home Thoughts: Pentax Announces Nifty O-GPS1 GPS Unit

"The new hotshoe-mounted O-GPS1 module fixes that oversight by recording latitude, longitude, altitude, Coordinated Universal Time and shooting angle. Everyday snappers might find an extra hotshoe attachment cumbersome, but astro-photography enthusiasts could well be enticed by the device's interesting "ASTROTRACER" function."

Pentax might not be up there with Canon or Nikon, but it is certainly not for the lack of trying. This is yet another impressive use of the anti-shake sensor platform: using the sensor to compensate for short movements of celestial objects. This is the second unique use for sensor-based stabilisation; the first was Pentax's automatic levelling feature. Nice to see Pentax exploring other ways to utilise the technology. Available in July for about US$250.