The Photographer's Ephemeris - BETA

[Thomas Krueger]

Fine application from Stephen Trainor, works with Adobe Air:

"The application uses Google Maps providing users the ability to select a location and determine the time and azimuth of sunrise or sunset for a given date or dates.
So what’s new about this?

Not a huge amount – there are other programs out there that calculate the same data and more.

What I haven’t seen before is the combination of the key data together with a topographical map, courtesy of Google, in one program for either Windows or Mac.

If you’re already on location, this isn’t probably going to help. If you’re planning a trip, then perhaps this is the program for you.

Cost
Nothing. It’s free. Help yourself."


http://stephentrainor.com/tools

[David Swinnard]

OK, this is pretty cool. Beats the old graph paper method for finding azimuth of sunrise/set.

Thanks!

[D. Bryant]

Fine application from Stephen Trainor, works with Adobe Air:



What is Adobe Air?

Don Bryant

[Scott Knowles]

Abobe Air (http://www.adobe.com/products/air/)

[Scott Knowles]

It's pretty cool. Adobe air is a simple installation and then the TPE is a straight-forward installation. As the developer says, it's the same information available on other Web pages for sun and moon rise, set, azimuth, etc. It just looks prettier, and it has some nice features, like saving locations.

[Sevo]

To become really useful, it would have to account for terrain height and shadowing - it is not really that thrilling to arrive at a location to discover that there indeed would be the sun up and shining if only the surrounding mountains were flat...

Sevo

[Scott Knowles]

To become really useful, it would have to account for terrain height and shadowing...

True, but the mathematics and information it would take to do that, even for one locale, would be daunting. Accounting for terrain can be accounted for by examing the map with the tool, and see what features would change the times, almost always making the sun/moon rise later or the sun/moon set earlier, along with pushing twilight forward or backward in time.

[Sevo]

True, but the mathematics and information it would take to do that, even for one locale, would be daunting.

Terrain information is obviously part of Google World, and as there is some Google derivative software around which uses it, there must be some way to get a free license similar to that for 2D Google data TPE currently uses.

Calculating the resultant shadowing cannot be that hard - every 3D terrain simulation does it.

Sevo

[Eric Woodbury]

Does this run on iPod Touch? Is there such a thing? Anybody using it?

[Greg Miller]

I'm a little curious why the guy deployed the app using Adobe AIR instead of via a web page. A web page would meant the app is available with any computer with access to the internet and also avoids deploying updates to the user base whenever enhancements / bug fixes are issued.

[Eric Woodbury]

Greg, there is no wifi or cell phone in places I photo. The app needs to stand alone.

[dazedgonebye]

There is a nice emphemeris program available free for pocketPC that I use on my smartphone.
http://www.dl-c.com/PPC/
The publisher also has programs for dof calculation and a stopwatch/timer.
All very handy.

[stephenjt]

Hi All - saw some hits on my site coming from the thread here, so thought I'd try to address some of the questions that have been asked. In turn:

1) Sevo: fair point. In fact, there are two issues to handle - (i) obstruction by an object such as a mountain and (ii) the effect of elevation above the horizon on rise/set times. I have a plan to address each of these in a future version (thanks to the kind help and advice of Jeff Conrad).

For most places I can obtain altitude above sea level for an arbitrary point on the map from the GeoNames web service. This means that once I can incorporate the right calculation, I'm imagining the user can either click on an obstruction (e.g. mountain) along the rise/set line from the chosen location to determine impact on visibility of the sun/moon, or, click on a point that is indicative of the terrain altitude where the horizon lies. This difference can then be used to determine the dip of the horizon and the resultant impact on set/rise time. For example, here in Colorado, set the map marker to the top of Pike's Peak, and then click somewhere out on the plane to the east. The difference of roughly 10,000' give or take, is the figure that's needed. (There are potentially cleverer ways to determine the effective horizon position, but to Scott's point, that would need a lot of local topo data which I don't currently have.)

2) Eric: no, it doesn't run on iPod Touch, but I'm actively investigating porting it over. There are plenty of sunrise/sunset programs for iPhone, but none that integrate a map view that I know of. They tend to use preset location lists, that typically don't include the places landscape photographers hang out. That's perfectly fine, but you'll need to refer to your topo map to plan the shoot, most likely, unless you already know the location well.

3) Greg: it's mostly because I'm more comfortable writing software in ActionScript and that you can do nicer things user interface-wise more easily in Flash/Flex (well, more easily for me at least). Hopefully, it's not too burdensome. In some ways, I quite like having a separate app that I can run, but maybe that's just me.

Stephen

[sultanofcognac]

Stephen,

I think it's beautiful and am very happy to have the result of your hard work available in my tool kit! :cool:

If others complain about the interface or usability they are free to build their own version. The price more than justifies its existence.

I especially appreciate being able to save locations, although a 'note' feature would be very handy.

Thanks very much for a unique tool. You've done an outstanding job. :)

Cheers,

Johnny
Saint Simeux, France

[stephenjt]

Thanks Johnny - good idea about the notes field for saved locations. I'll look to add that in.

Stephen