Your “Landscape Assistant” Phone App

It’s called PhotoPills, and it’s a really popular app with landscape photographers because it goes way beyond letting you know when and exactly where the sun will rise and set on any given day—it also tells you when blue hour or golden hour will occur, it has a moon phases calendar, plus it has everything from a depth-of-field calculator, to a calculator for determining hyperfocal distance, to long exposure and time lapse calculations. It’s an incredibly powerful little app for $9.99 in the App Store or the Google Play store (well, it was $9.99 the last time I checked, but like pricing on everything, it’s subject to change). Anyway, if you’re looking for a kick-butt, all-around app (did I mention it has 3D augmented reality, so you can hold the app up and see, for example, how the Milky Way would look over the scene you’re aiming at. Incredibly helpful for your composition. See page 127 for more on this), spend the $10 and you’ll have a landscape shooting assistant with you out in the field (and it doesn’t need food or shelter, other than your pocket or purse).