Sun Surveyor takes the mystery out of the sunrise, sunset, and moon phases, allowing photographers and filmmakers to scout the best locations, plan effectively, and get the perfect shot.
The Live Camera View, Interactive Map (with Street View), 3D Compass, and detailed Ephemeris provide a wealth of information about the largest natural light source in the galaxy, as well as the moon, and milky way:
– View augmented reality projections of the sun and moon paths, pinpoint the time the sun or moon will be at a particular location in the sky
– Predict and plan for the golden hour, blue hour and every sunrise, sunset, moonrise and moonset
– Prepare night photography shots with the Milky Way & star trail features
Solar Industry (PV) Professionals, architects, real estate agents, and gardeners will also find a wealth of empowering interactive features:
– Show clients the quality and quantity of seasonal sunlight at a given location
– Understand potential shade of surroundings and discover any obstructions
– Create images of the summer and winter Solstice & Equinox paths for a site
Additional features:
– Photo Opportunities (new!) – an interactive listing of critical times to help inspire and generate shot ideas; including the full moon looming low in the sky during magic hour, total darkness for stargazing, and more
– Position Search (new!) – an extremely powerful tool to search for sun, moon and milky way center positions within various constraints, for the perfectionist planner
– Visual time machine – take a quick glance at the light for a day, or dial in desired compositions easily
– Moon distance, age, apogee, perigee, super moon predictions
– Sun shadow information – calculate the length of shadows cast by objects
– Share details and locations with clients and colleagues
– Offline usage (excludes Map View, Street View) – enter coordinates, save & load locations with no data connection or GPS available
– Measure distance, and difference between elevations, and vertical angle differentials with the Map view
– Import and export Google Earth .kmz/.kml locations
– Magnetic declination compensation
– Widgets – 9 varieties of sun and moon widgets for your homescreen
** NOTE: the Live View and 3D Compass portions of this app make use of your device’s compass. Some devices may not have a compass.
Great app for predicting sun positions. I use it all the time for film shoots. The calibration mode is so great to have since compasses are often affected in the city or in buildings, and when worse comes to worst, the street map mode gives practical confirmation of uncertain observations. Only upgrade might be to allow enlarging hour indicators or change their color/give a opaque window, because when looking at the sun in live view, sometimes it’s very difficult to read the hours. Thx
This app is very useful. One way for example, the shadow length tool,can be used to find the height of a tall object, or predicting where it’s shadow will be at any given time or where it was, on any date and time in past history . Just that part alone to me makes this app a powerful tool and entertaining as well. Not to mention the more ovious use of this app. The Sun and Moon position, again at any point of time, past, present or future. Will never be without Sun Surveyor.
This app is like Antikythera mechanism combined with alien technology from Area 51! I know it’s supposed to be for photography but I use it for various building tasks in which it is important to know the position of the sun at different times of the year. It’s great for determining lunar events and just messing around with for fun. Just buy the full version. It’s the best money I’ve ever spent on an app. Developer talent and passion combined!
This has been my “go to” tool for planning milky way photography for several years. The tutorial videos are very helpful. I can plan a photo shoot from the comfort of my home or when on location during the day. It has more useful and easily understood features than any other app I have seen.
Seems to work really well on Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro tablet. (Can’t seem to install on my S7 mobile phone though). This app is very responsive and accurate. The ability to save locations and times with notes is fantastic. Extremely intuitive and well laid out. I LOVE the fact that permissions are NOT at all invasive or unnecessary!
“Photo opportunities” – fail to mention eclipses. App will not notify me of special celestial events, nor even mention them in “opportunities” section. I was very disappointed last year when eclipse happen on my birthday – and I didn’t even know about it. What good is an app that’s perfectly designed to let you photograph such an event but doesn’t even tell you about it? Please add a system of notifications for events in areas I plan to travel, and where I’m currently located.
Great app but widgets need an update. They are very informative but the text is very small so it’s hard to glance and get the info you want. Also the style is very basic. It does what it needs too but could definitely be better to match current android look. Overall awesome app though.
Nicely made app! But it bought it to perhaps create horizon files for use with PV-Software. I’d like to be able to log the heading and azimuth of objects like the LOG function in the IOS-App “Theodolite”. At the moment I’d have to create a ton of Screenshots from all the points i’d like to log and then create the file manually. Would it be possible to add a feature like this? I’m sure this would help a lot of PV-planners 🙂 thank you!
I have installed the app yesterday but it only shows the sun path with no moon path. Keep trying on all buttons but still doesn’t work. P.S It works very well now after the quick help from the developer. This is a brilliant app.
The Street View tool was completely inaccurate for planning yesterday’s lunar eclipse. It seems to have given me winter declinations. Live view was probably accurate as it match the AR view in other astronomy apps.
This is, without a doubt, the single most beautiful piece of software I have ever had the pleasure of purchasing. Elegance, rich functionality, smart UI. If you don’t feel the need to buy it, just for the sheer pleasure of having it on your phone, then you don’t know what you’re missing. Thanks Adam, you are a craftsman.
Really satisfied with the app features. I did use the lite version way back 5-6 years ago i think and decided to get back in Cinematography and bought this right away.
20211031. So far working as expected. Best feature is its integration with Google Maps and Street view. It really helps simplify planning your set up to target alignments. I’d like to see a better sighting compass layout.Get familiar with it first before your first shoot. Unexpected benefit. If you can adjust your driving time, use this app to avoid driving into the low sun. Also great for aerial mapping to pick high contrast times and shadow length.
Very helpful for planning timelapse sequences for upcoming sunrises & sunsets. I liked it on my Nexus 6P, but needed to calibrate the compass fairly regularly. This was true for other apps that use a compass setting, and quite easy to do via the “Calibrate the compass” setting in Google Maps.The sensors in my new Pixel 4XL are much better at keeping the compass accurate. The app’s “future view” slider really helps when using the Pixel’s new astrophotography feature. I use it to set up my tripod and align everything for capturing a suitable foreground during the day, then just go out to attach the camera and get the shot at the predicted time. (Much appreciated when it is -25C!)
I like it for landscape photos. I would have given 5 stars, but one of my favourite features was the ability to write notes of an area so you could read these if wanting to return, the map reference was saved to so click it & your note & reference were there. However, all the references & notes I took have disappeared. No idea how that happened & gutted that it has. If anyone can explain this I’d love to hear from you.
I have been using Sunsurveyor for iPad for many years. Since recent installed it on my GETAC Z70 military specs tablet because of its professional GPS unit. This combination : Sunsurveyor with the GETAC make it the very best Sun / Moon / Milkyway surveyor ever. I also have Planit Pro and Photo Pills installed. Neither of them comes even close to the incredible user interface of Sunsurveyor. The accuracy of the app is as good if not better as the others. But as said the user interface is just the best of the best. All the information required to read and adjust settings in one screen without ever having to hop from screen to screen and back is just such a time saver. I use the app for my landscape and architecture photography and every now and then for scouting camp locations to see where I will have Sun or Shadow. It simply never fails. The app is not bloated with all kinds of extra info like ‘magic’ curves of Sun or Moon paths but gives you exactly that what is needed for the job. Over the years I had some contact with the developer Adam Ratana , always a most peasant conversation and he proofed to be very open to small suggestions. I am a professional photographer with 40+ years experience – now ‘legally’ retired and often realize that thanks to apps like Sunsurveyor I can make better photos where in the past even after a lot of endless calculations – I could just just missing ‘the moment’ the Moon for instance showed its face over a mountain. 100% recommended – don’t be blinded by the marketing of the big colorful app makers. Susurveyor really shines !!
Great app for adults and children alike. I have used for the photo opportunities obviously but also to consider where best to place my garden picnic table in order to catch the summer evening sun 😎. The app is highly interactive and customisable allowing you to tailor to my varied particular needs. Highly recommended.
I have several solar geometry apps I use as I work in the solar education industry and this app is the best of them all by a long margin. a key feature this has that most do not is true north setting vs magnetic north. you can also calibrate against the actual sun position. its AR camera interaction is the most useful and informative. it has all the features required for a solar access assessment and also has many fun aspects like moon and milky way positions. all in all, the best of the lot.
the app is cool but for some reason the live view only points west, no matter where I turn. I can use the compas during calibration correctly, but as soon as I try to view the horizon it no longer works. There is no metal around and I am using a Note 9.
Free and useful. It would have been better if it displayed the 10-day weather data (raining, cloudy, partially cloudy, etc) as well. It’s useful to know if it will be clear or cloudy at the specified day.
This is the best Sun Path app out there for the Android platform. I’m a location scout for film and TV and this works like a charm. My only complaint is that Street View doesn’t allow a snapshot to be taken like you can in Live View. I use Street View about as much as I use Live View and the only way I can grab that shot is through a screen grab, which isn’t very efficient. Also, if Sun Surveyor could take advantage of a camera’s wide angle lens (I have a Samsung S20 Ultra), this app would be even more valuable to me.
Excellent app. Very useful, especially when needing to get a quick idea of how the sun’s movements (particularly the solstices) will affect the layout of a new house.
Powerful tool for star gazing, photography and more. You can see the forecast and position of the sun, moon and other bodies, altitude, rise and set times. Even good for setting up camp and protecting from over exposure to the sun. 10/10
Not always intuitive as an interface but good information. Would be handy to be able to “lock” panels and info options — e.g. never be able to turn off sun position visualization.
The coolest app I have. It let’s me know where the sun is going to be. I live in the Pacific Northwest, so a lot of the times, this app is the only time I can see the sun. Seriously though, this is really a handy and fascinating app: I found the sunniest spot for my garden, and the best area for a photograph of the moon.
Very comprehensive features. Works great.
Kills battery way faster now. Hope its fixed so i can put this back on my phone.
Best app of the kind. You don’t need a “camp” to learn how to use it because is very well designed and user friendly. Gives you all needed information about sun, moon and galactic center.
I bought this app years ago to determine solar alignments for an archaeologist. It worked great. I now use it years to later determine the placement of sunscreens around my house. It’s a great app. I highly recommend it. Oh, I forgot to mention if your a science geek this app is great
I use this app mainly to track the sun position during the day for photographic purposes. There is such a great wealth of information here and it’s simple to use. I recommend searching out the instructional videos on YouTube if you really want to find out how to get the most out of the app. Customer support has been very courteous and helpful to knuckleheads like me
Great tool to tell where you sun, moon, and milky way will be.
Excellent app. Good support. Had a problem with it not working correctly on my tablet (turned out the tablet has no compass). Got good response. Works well on my Pixel phone however.
Hasn’t received updates for a year. But it’s a complete and useful app for either technical (i.e. solar energy) and artistic purposes.
Still learning, really wish there was a regional cloud cover forecast map included. I got this to use to plan my trips. 3 stars for now, might go up when I learn it a bit more. 5 stars if they include a regional cloud cover forecast map
Easy to use. Simple interface. Less complicated than some photo planning app. Well supported by developer.
By far the best you’ll find! I’m blown away. It’s intuitive interface makes it easy to use & explore with.
What another solar geometry app could have that this one doesn’t or could do better is beyond me. Highly recommended for professionals needing location guidance, or even those fellow info nerds out there.
I had to uninstall this as it brought with it a very annoying set of ads that run loudly every time you charge the phone. Problem solved once this app had been deleted.
I have this app in both Android and IOS. There is a wealth of information but I especially favor the tabulated ephemera for their accurate calculations. Visually fun!
Its the simplest, most useful app of its type. Highly recommend. Information is presented clearly and accurately.