Sun angle/location indicator

I'm working on a project to revive the Sundicator and would like any

feedback from members to see what, if any interest there is in the

product. Used in conjunction with a compass this battery free,

hand-held dial type device can very accurately tell you when and where

on the horizon the sun will rise, how it will cross through the sky

and more. It can also be used as a compass if you get lost (and you

don't have a compass). I've used one on architecture shoots with great

success. All you need to know is the latitude of the subject, day of

the year and hope the weather is on your side.

Any thoughts on the tool is appreciated.

In this day when we can easily and cheaply carry more computing power in our pockets, than NASA sent to the moon, I question whether such a project would offer much return. Personally I use Jonathan Sachs' excellent freeware program "<a href="http://home.comcast.net/~jonsachs/">Ephemeris</a>" for my pocket PC. It not only gives the sunrise and sunset angles and times, but the azimuth and elevation for any time during the day. Or night, as it includes the moon.<P>

Of course there are photographers who don't have pocket pc's.

For those who might want a little more information about the device, there's a picture of the Sundicator on page 23 of the PDF document at:<P>

<a href="http://www.wrightwater.com/wpi/wpipubs/pdfs/Chaco%20Rephotography%20Text.pdf">http://www.wrightwater.com/wpi/wpipubs/pdfs/Chaco%20Rephotography%20Text.pdf</a>

There's a freeware product called RiseSet available for the Palm OS as well:

 

http://www.davidbray.org/palm/

 

I haven't tried it out yet.

The Michael Harris book "Professional Architectural Phogography" has a few pages of charts call Sun Finders that show sun position at various latitudes and times of year and day. For both north and south hemispheres. A little hard to read a first, but once you get used to them, they're quite handy. Somehow he got permission (?) to use them from a book called The Professional Guide to Photo Data, by Richard Platt, 1991. I've not photocopied these so I can take them into the field, though, and have thought about doing that. To anwer your question, Michael, I would be interested, especially if southern hemisphere was easily distinguished from northern. I'm in New Zealand and STILL getting used to the sun being low in the north in the winter. I too do architecture, and need this ability. The streets of my newly adapted city, Wellington are not laid out laid north/south, but curve around the harbour, so getting my bearings has been challenging!

I downloaded and installed RiseSet on my Palm last night. I checked it against a few online sources, and it seems accurate.

http://www.mew3.com/palm/mooninfo/

 

 

http://www.mew3.com/palm/sol2/

 

For Palm pilots both work well.

 

Darcy

For future planning (e.g., when will the Moon pass through Delicate Arch?), I recommend Heavenly Opportunity (PC):

http://weba.viawest.net/users/fcs/ho/

Michael,

 

I'm interested in the tool you are talking about. More information would be appreciated.

 

Cheers,

Graeme

Try this, www.suncard.co.uk

Thank you all for your thoughts. I can appreciate that some have embraced the wonderful technology that is the Personal Digital Assistant and want to use it to its full potential. If you've found what you need in order to tell you where the sun will be at any time of the year, then by all means use it.

I did take a visit to the SunCard site and found that it differs greatly from the product I am working on in a few key ways. First, it is only accurate to within about 5deg, second, it will only indicate where the sun rises and sets, not its path and altitude over the horizon, third you need a compass to use it. The tool I am working on can act as a compass, and a watch providing you have sunshine. You would be unencumbered by batteries dying while on a back woods trip, nor would you have to worry about breaking a delicate screen should you drop it.

If the demand is there (I'm not looking at mass marketing mind you)I will produce versions for a multitude of latitudes both N and S.

I look forward to more feed back on this and other forums. Thank you all for your comments.

MT