Using an iPhone & iPad in Thailand Tips, App Reviews and News for the iPhone and iPad by Richard Barrow

Sunlight Tracker for the iPhone

Sunlight Tracker is a must have tool for any outdoor photographer interested in knowing the best times to shoot their subjects outdoors.

This is a handy little app for your iPhone called Sunlight Tracker which is currently free in the iTunes store. Using GPS, it takes your current location and tells you the times of sunrise and sunset. More importantly it gives you the times of twilight and also the total length of day. As you can see from the screenshot above, the length of day in Thailand is 11 hours and 37 minutes at the moment. Scrolling to the left or right you can see the details for the past or present. There is also a calendar where it makes it easier to check the times a month or so down the road. What is even more interesting, is that it will show you your present location on a Google map and a yellow line to show direction of sunrise and a green line to show direction of sunset. The red line shows the current position of the sun. What makes it useful to a photographer, is that you can easily change the time of day so that you will get the exact position of the sun which includes both the sun's azimuth and elevation. This make it useful when you are planning a trip to a new location. Of course, a Google map and built in compass will suffice for most people, but as this app is presently free it won't hurt to download. But, be quick, it might go back up to $1.99 soon.