### Tuesday Jul 28, 2009 at 00:23

# The Photographer's Ephemeris - Beta 0.9.5 now available

A very quick post to say that TPE 0.9.5 is available. Here’s the updated feature list:

## Beta 0.9.5

- Improved Details view now includes Twilight times and Geodetics panel
- Use secondary map marker to determine when sun or moon will clear an obstacle such as a mountain (Geodetics)
- Correct rise and set times for the dip of the horizon (e.g. the sun is seen to rise earlier from a mountain top)
- Use secondary map marker to set elevation at the horizon, or specify manually (to calculate dip of the horizon)
- View the estimated distance to the horizon on the map, based on height above the horizon
- Swap primary and secondary map marker positions using button or keyboard shortcut (S)
- Haversine formula (for determining great circle distances) replaced with Vincenty algorithm for improved accuracy
- Ctrl + and Ctrl – zooms in and out of map
- Number keypad plus and minus added to keyboard shortcuts
- Revised and expanded glossary
- F1 key opens usage instructions in browser (requires internet connection)
- Fixes bug where rise/set times were not recalculated on double-clicking map
- Fixes bug where previous/next event in details view could stall on a particular event
- Tooltips updated and corrected

Quite a lot in there. I’ve added some notes on how some of the newer advanced features work here.

I need to write up some proper tutorials on many of these with examples of actual shoots – keep an eye out, I’ll try to add a series of posts starting soon.

In the meantime, enjoy, and let me know of any problems you find.

Posted in Technology TPE

Stephen · Tuesday, July 28, 2009, 00:23 · Permalink · Comment [4]

### Wednesday Jun 17, 2009 at 23:00

# TPE 0.9.0 released

The Photographer’s Ephemeris v0.9.0 is now available.

Fairly minor changes, but useful ones:

- You can finally resize the window: those of you with large monitors can now make the most of them to really dig into the details of the map area. Thanks for your patience on this one. So long you don’t go larger than 1200px high, you’ll reveal a selection of additional eclectic graphics down the right hand side, courtesy of my wife, Alice.
- If you’re in the Details view and you change the date, the program doesn’t revert back to the multi-day view as it previously did. You can now scroll from day to day and see how the timing of the moon shifts by watching the details graph.
- Finally some minor changes to the About page, including proper credit for the moonrise/set algorithm that is used (thanks to Jeff Conrad for the pointer on this)

I had hoped to have a couple of other features incorporated into this version: (i) correction for height above the local horizon and (ii) altitude (i.e. angle in the astronomical sense) of obstructions above the horizon, such as the mountain between you and the glorious sunset.

While all the maths is working (for the first of these at least), getting the UI right is proving tricky. One of the nice things about the current program is that it requires only two user inputs: a place and a date.

Once you introduce corrections for height above horizon and alitude of objects on the map, the number of inputs, and therefore the complexity for the user immediately increases.

So, I try to ask myself (not, in all honesty, having much of a clue as to the answer): what would Steve do? Haven’t worked it out yet.

As ever, your comments and feedback much appreciated.

## Some recent quotations

To end, a handful of recent quotations about TPE:

My all-time favourite(!) from Steev Selby

> This is the holy grail of sunrise/set programs

From Wasabi Photo

> I am frankly gobsmacked by what this nifty software can do … it is rare that I am in awe by what you can find on the internet for free .. but this is one of those times when I am really blown away.

From Alex Wise down in one of my favourite places, Australia

> I’ve seen similar things done in the past but find this much better and think its a must for any landscape photographer.

On EOS-Network

> Just occasionally, you find something really useful. If you only found this blog today, then today is your lucky day because this’ll be the second really useful thing you’ve found!

## Hola! Witaj! Szervusz!

Finally, hello to visitors from Spain, Poland, Hungary. Looks like TPE has been picked up via a number of sites over in Europe and indeed the majority of traffic over the past few days has been coming from those parts of the world.

I appreciate your linguistic abilities and forbearance with my anglophone application :-)

Posted in Technology TPE

Stephen · Wednesday, June 17, 2009, 23:00 · Permalink · Comment [2]

### Monday Apr 20, 2009 at 19:36

# TPE in the blogosphere

Nice to see TPE getting some pick up in the blogosphere, and on some forums too. Here are links to some of the sites that have covered it:

- plαdys
- F29
- Rich Durnan’s Blog

## What’s next?

TPE is currently described as being in Beta and is at version 0.8.1 – hopefully that’s clue enough that development is not done yet. Indeed, there’s a long list of improvements I’d like to make.

Here’s what’s in my mind:

- Fix the known issues – see here
- Resizable/maximizable window – wouldn’t it be great to make that map bigger?
- Adjust bearings for local magnetic declination (compass north, not true north)
- Add transit times to the Details section
- Extend Locations to allow for ‘Occasions’ – locations at a particular time and date
- Extend Occasions to allow for ‘Expeditions’ – plan your multi-day shoot and compose a full itinerary
- Printable layouts – you probably want all this info on a sheet of paper to carry with you into the wilds
- KML support so you can copy and paste, import and export to/from Google Earth
- Offline mode – get the times and angles for your saved locations when offline, even if you can’t get the map (that’s part of the reason for doing this as an Adobe AIR app, rather than as a web-site)
- Search capabilities – you probably want answers to questions such as “when is full moon at Delicate Arch in October?”
- Potentially some more astronomical phenomena (lunar eclipses?) depending on just how much more maths I can take

A few folks have commented that it would be great to have this integrated into Google Earth. I’m personally not so sure – I often find the level of detail in Google Earth for out-of-the-way places to be inferior to the topographic map view of Google Maps. Additionally, there are a few issues with the lighting in the 3D model than could serve to confuse (noted here). However, if there looks like being a good way through this, then I’ll look again for sure.

In the meantime, what other features would you find useful? Let me know by e-mailing or leaving a comment.

Posted in Technology TPE

Stephen · Monday, April 20, 2009, 19:36 · Permalink · Comment [1]

### Wednesday Apr 15, 2009 at 00:10

# TPE 0.8.0 released

The Photographer’s Ephemeris Beta 0.8.0 is now available.

This version adds some useful capabilities for the photographer planning a shot that isn’t quite right at sunrise or sunset. Clicking the new Details button gives access to the positions of the sun and moon for the full 24 hour period for the selected date and location:

You can drag the slider to an arbitrary time and view the azimuth and elevation angle of sun and moon both numerically and graphically. Azimuth is shown on the map (when the sun or moon is above the horizon only) and elevation angle is shown in the lower details panel.

As an alternative to dragging, click through the various celestial events of the day using the buttons in the lower right corner of the upper panel.

You now also have the opportunity to select your own psychedelic colours for sun/moon rise/set.

And finally, an improved map legend, especially for Jim Goldstein :-)

Posted in Technology TPE

Stephen · Wednesday, April 15, 2009, 00:10 · Permalink · Comment [4]

### Saturday Apr 04, 2009 at 21:44

# TPE 0.7.5 released

The Photographer’s Ephemeris is now at Beta version 0.7.5, a few days later than planned, but finally done.

The new version doesn’t look radically different to the last, but has a few nice enhancements under the hood.

Primary amongst those is automatic time zone management: previous versions of TPE would set the time zone offset for the selected map location, but were not aware of daylight savings policies, meaning you had to set this yourself manually.

Given that landscape photographers, as a group, have a propensity to plan their travels well ahead and go to great lengths to get the shots they need in remote and hard to reach locations, it seemed important to minimize the chances of anyone getting the time of a critical shot wrong by an hour, just because they did not know the daylight savings policy of Patagonia in 2011, or similar.

TPE 0.7.5 takes care of this for you.

Also added is optional correction for observer altitide. The sun rises sooner and sets later when you’re in the mountains. I saw this first hand up at Dream Lake the other week, where the sun struck the top of the Flattop mountain a good 10 minutes or so before the calculated time of sunrise.

Of course, actual on-the-ground sunrise/sunset times are impacted by multiple factors that cannot be determined in advance by a computer, including barometric pressure and temperature which change refraction. So, take the times as a guide, and as always, leave sufficient time to get to your shooting location!

Various other fixes and tweaks included too. Have fun and let me know how it goes.

The Photographer’s Ephemeris Beta 0.7.5

UPDATE: 0.7.6 released today – a few refinements and minor fixes. If you have 0.7.2 or later already installed, you’ll be prompted to update.

Posted in Technology TPE

Stephen · Saturday, April 04, 2009, 21:44 · Permalink · Comment [4]

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