Solmeta GPS N1 for D7000, part 2

The GPS unit arrived on August 11, a couple of days before a BBQ.  It took under two weeks to arrive, faster than I expected.  The parcel was not shipped through China mail though.  It was through the Hong Kong post office.  Parcels do arrive in Canada faster when they are shipped out of Hong Kong.

Anyway, I got to play with the Solmeta for the first time yesterday at the BBQ event.  It was simple to use.  Just slide the main unit into the hotshoe flash mount, connect the USB cable to the unit, and connect the USB cable to the camera.  Now, interestingly, contrary to what I have read online, the USB end that connects to the camera is not so easily breakable.  It fits in very tightly.  I really have to apply a good amount force to plug it in and to pull it out--if the connector head is wet, it would be next to impossible to pull it out.

Once the GPS unit is connected up and turned on, it takes about a couple of minutes--I did not time it but it felt like a couple of minutes--to acquire satellite signals.  The LED at the top would blink as it tries to acquire signal, until it becomes solid when it is ready.  While the GPS unit is connected to the camera and is turned on, the top LCD on the D7000 displays "GPS"  beside the focus mode indicator.

When it is all ready to go, you just shoot and GPS information is recorded with the photo.  To view the GPS information, I would scroll through the photo detail screen as usual.  GPS information was now displayed along with the histogram, ISO, aperture, speed, etc.

Now, there was one annoying behaviour I observed but have not been able to reproduce after I returned home.  At the BBQ, with the GPS unit connected to the D7000, I was able to shoot like normal but then after a few shots, I was unable to half-press the shutter release button to focus.  As soon as I half-pressed the button, the camera took the shot right away so the pictures came out blurry.  Was it a problem with the GPS unit or with my possibly broken Nikkor 18-200mm lens?  To troubleshoot, I just removed the GPS unit and the shutter release button worked again as expected.  Something is funny about this GPS unit ... it could be because the USB cable was not fully inserted.

In the photo above, the camera fired away before the lens had a chance to focus as if it was shooting in manual mode.  This is a behaviour I have yet to reproduce.