The Photographer's Ephemeris
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Price £5.99/ Available for iPhone, iPod touch, iPad
The Photographer's Ephemeris by Crookneck Consulting will be a godsend of an app for forward-thinking landscape photographers who want to organise photo shoots based on when and where light will fall.
At its most basic, the app for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Macs or PCs uses Google Maps to show projections of sun and moon rise and set paths. But it can do so for any date and time of year, down to the nearest minute.
This can produce an accurate map of where light will fall and at what time, all wrapped up in a visual package where you can zoom in anywhere around the globe (well, anywhere that Google Maps has been) to view basic maps or actual terrain.
But that's not all, and here's where the app gets that bit more advanced: Knowing that objects can easily fall in the way of the light's path, Ephemeris also takes on board altitude.
By acknowledging your current (or projected future) position, a secondary drop pin can be placed onto surrounding objects to assess their height in relation to the sun or moon and whether light will be blocked. If it does, then you may want to tweak the clock and/or location to work out when you should be at your chosen location for the best possible results – meaning it's possible to calculate when to be at your destination.
Verdict
There's very little wrong with The Photographer's Ephemeris. The only tweak we'd like to see made is for a more social build – one where it would be possible to share your perfect location and times with fellow app users, and attach associated pictures to bring on a more visual linkage of shots taken in specific locations.
On occasion, Google Maps' terrain view won't zoom in to a desirable level either, but that's outside of the app's control. Otherwise we're very impressed with this excellent app on our iPad 2, despite the fact the desktop version for Mac and PC can be downloaded for free.