Latitude and longitude of any city in decimal, DMS and DDM, with country and time zone. Reverse lookup, distance, bearing, and lists of places. Free.
Landscape and night photographers
Photo Planner
Plan a landscape or night shoot step by step: the spot, golden hour, Sun and Moon alignments, Milky Way nights, then the camera settings. Free.
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A landscape or night photograph is settled days before the shutter opens: where you stand, when the light comes, whether the Moon is up. Each is its own calculation, and one wrong answer costs the evening. Photo Planner lines up a free calculator for each, in the order a shoot gets planned, from the spot to the settings. No account, and nothing you type is kept.
Every answer starts from the spot
The latitude and longitude finder turns a place name into coordinates, with the country and time zone that tell you which Springfield answered. Give it a second place and it adds the bearing from the first, the number the alignment planner asks for.
Golden hour and blue hour, day by day
The golden hour calculator sets out a month in one table, from civil dawn to civil dusk, and names the evening with the longest golden hour. A single day adds the Sun’s path, its sunrise and sunset bearings, and the shadow it throws. What colour is the sky names the light at a given moment and when it changes next, and equinox and solstice dates gives the year’s earliest sunset and latest sunrise.
The Sun or the Moon in the axis of a street
Name where you will stand and that bearing, or the landmark at the far end, and the Sun and Moon alignment planner returns the days of the next twelve months when the Sun or the Moon crosses that line low enough to sit in the frame. For the Moon, it can keep full moons only.
Milky Way nights come in runs around each new moon
The Milky Way nights calendar keeps the nights of the next twelve months when the core is up, the sky astronomically dark and the Moon out of the way, grouped into runs. The moon phase calendar covers the month night by night, and says how large the Moon comes out at your focal length.
Settings come last, one calculator per kind of shot
My rule is to settle the date before touching any of these: an exposure can be corrected on the spot, a missed new moon cannot.
- The NPF rule calculator gives the longest exposure before stars trail: 9.3 s at 14 mm f/2.8 on a 24 Mpx full frame aimed at the celestial equator, where the 500 rule allows 35.7 s.
- The star trail calculator warns when gaps between frames will break the trails into dashes.
- The ND filter calculator gives the exposure behind one filter or two stacked.
- The hyperfocal distance calculator says where to focus for a sharp foreground and horizon.
- The timelapse calculator gives the clip length and card space of a session.
What you take into the field
A day of golden hour, an alignment pass, a run of Milky Way nights and a moment of the Moon each come with a card to share. None of these calculators knows the weather or your skyline: a hill to the west takes the last half hour of golden light, and a clear night is a forecast made two days out.
Questions
Is there a free app for landscape photography planning?
Photo Planner works in the browser, free and with no limit, and its calendars answer in the city’s local time, daylight saving included.
How far ahead can I plan a shoot?
The golden hour and moon phase calendars serve this month and the next, plus any single date. The alignment planner and the Milky Way calendar look twelve months ahead.
What’s included
The tools this offer brings together, each on its own page.
Golden hour, blue hour, sunrise, sunset and day length for your city, day by day over a month, in local time. Free, no sign-up.
When the Sun or Moon lines up with a street, a bridge or a ridge from where you stand: give a bearing or a landmark, get twelve months of dates.
Which nights of the next year the Milky Way core is visible from your location: dark sky, no Moon, core high enough, grouped into runs. Free.
The next peak of ten major meteor showers from your city: the best hour, meteors per hour under a dark sky, and the Moon. Free, no sign-up.
Moon phase calendar for your city: every night's phase, illumination, moonrise and moonset, distance and size, and how big it is on your lens.
NPF rule calculator: how long you can expose the night sky before stars trail, from your sensor, lens and where you point, not focal length alone.
How long your trails will be, how many frames the session takes, and whether the gap between them will turn the trails into dotted lines. Free, no sign-up.
What to set once the filter is on — including two filters stacked, where the stops add and the numbers on the rings do not. Free, no sign-up, nothing stored.
Hyperfocal distance calculator: where to focus so foreground and horizon come out sharp, and exactly what is sharp if you focus elsewhere. Free.
Timelapse calculator: how long your clip will be, how many frames it takes and how much card space it eats, before you spend the evening finding out.
What colour the clear sky is over any city, right now or at a chosen moment: the gradient, hex codes and CSS, the light of the hour and when it changes.
Equinox and solstice dates for the next ten years, to the minute in UTC, with cross-quarter days, perihelion, aphelion and your own longest day. Free.
Every solar and lunar eclipse of the next ten years as your city sees it: type, local times, Sun covered, Sun or Moon height. Free, no sign-up.