The Photographer’s Ephemeris Launches Version 3.0 for iOS: More Usable and Functional
The Photographer’s Ephemeris is one of the popular sun and moon calculators out there for planning outdoor shoots with natural light. The service has just announced Version 3.0 of its popular iOS app, which is being featured by Apple in the App Store’s Photo & Video category.
Usability Improvements
The app, which lets you see how light will fall on any place on Earth at any time, is now sleeker in its user interface to match the service’s free web application that offers the same functionality in a browser.
In addition to making its design uniform across platforms, the app has also received a number of usability improvements to help make using it quicker and easier.
Tapping the displayed date allows you to change it, or choose from a provided list of key events (e.g. the phases of the moon). Location searching is now unified, allowing you to search via the Web and through your saved locations at the same time.
Functionality Improvements
New features in Version 3.0 include Line of Sight Analysis and Visual Search.
Line of Sight Analysis lets you figure out whether two points on a map are visible to one another. This helps you scout locations for your subject and your camera a little easier before you actually arrive on location.
You can specify building heights in the scene and see overlays of the sun and the moon.
The new Visual Search has been improved to search for when the sun/moon will appear at a specific position in the sky, search by moon illumination amount, set search tolerance in degrees, and a number of other powerful filters and options.
When paired with the Line of Sight Analysis, the new search can let you figure out when the sun or moon will appear above a specific landmark.
Finally, other features found in this latest update include sharing shot plans socially, transit time info, and golden hour indication.
Here’s a 3-minute video tour of this latest major update:
You can purchase the The Photographer’s Ephemeris iOS app for $9 over in the iTunes App Store.
