14 DAY TRIAL // Panoramio attracts a special breed of photography buffs, those who like to travel, even if its from behind the laptop screen. The geo-photo sharing community site has been running a series of contests, one each month, to surface the best photos uploaded to the site. Now it's spicing things up a bit with the perfect prize for its users a Casio GPS - camera hybrid.
"Now you can add some excitement to your photo project and enter your photos to the monthly Panoramio Geotagged Photo Contest!," Gerard Sanz, Panoramio's Community Manager, wrote.
"Starting this month, we’ll be giving away the new Casio Hybrid-GPS camera EX-H20G to the winner of each category (Scenery, Heritage, Travel and Unusual Location). The Panoramio community reviews all of the submissions and votes for what they consider to be the best each month," he announced.
Panoramio has been running this contest for quite a while and the winning photos can be quite spectacular. So far though, winning the contest gave the photographers bragging rights, but not much else.
That has changed as, starting this month, the winners will also get a camera that seems purpose-built for the Panoramio community.
The EX-H20G seems like a decent camera on its own, with a 14.1 megapixel resolution, 10x optical zoom and an image stabilizer.
However, its party piece is the built-in GPS and motion sensor. The camera automatically geo-tags every photo you take, so they're ready to go as soon as you retrieve them from the camera.
The motion sensor enables users to tag photos even when they are inside or unable to get good satellite reception. The camera just tracks the user's movements from the last known GPS position and determines the location based on that.
Runners-up get an Eye-Fi Explore X2 Wi-Fi Memory Card and honorable mentions get a Panoramio-branded 2 GB USB drive. You can check out this month's winners here to get some inspiration and see what you're up against.