Review: Blue Hour and Golden Hour Calculators for iPhone
The blue hour and the golden hour are two of the best periods of outdoor photography.
You can experience these two periods twice each day, just before sunrise and before sunset.
During the blue hour, the sky will have a beautiful blue tone that can range from a single, pure blue color to a gradient with 50 (or more) shades of blue.
During the golden hour, you'll experience warm light that applies a nice golden touch to almost everything.
It's not for nothing that many photographers value these two periods of the day and swarm out to take photos. Here are some sample photos that I took during the blue and golden hour to illustrate what I'm talking about.
A mosque in Tirana, Albania, during the blue hour
Federal Chancellery in Berlin during the holden hour
An abandoned ship in Vienna during the blue hour
Sequence of Light during a day
Throughout the day, you'll experience different kinds of light, from the cold and harsh light from the moon at night to the warm and flattering warm glow during the golden hour.
So there are different types of light that you'll get during 24 hours:
- Darkness, aka. night. If the moon is visible, the light is usually cold with a blueish tint. Great for mystery photos.
- Next is the morning blue hour.
- Then comes the morning golden hour where the sky has all kinds of warm, reddish, yellowish and golden tones. Great for moody photos.
- Until noon, you'll have soft and warm light (great for outdoor portraits)
- Noon is the period of harsh light
- In the afternoon, the light starts to get softer and warmer again.
- Next is the sundowning golden hour.
- And finally you can experience the sundowning blue hour.
Trivia: How long is the golden hour, and when does it begin, and when does it end? If you answered "one hour" to the first question, I have to disappoint you. The duration of the blue hour depends on the time of the year and your geographic location.
In 2007, I experienced a blue hour in Norway that lasted almost an entire day during the polar night. And while the blue hour may begin around 8 pm here in Vienna, Austria, it may start as late as 11 pm in northern cities like Helsinki, Finland.
But luckily for us photographers, developers came up with smart ideas to help you quickly find the beginning and end of the blue hour and golden hour.
Those apps are called blue hour calculators.
In this blog post, I'll review two blue hour calculators I regularly use: The ProCamera App widget and Sun Surveyor App. While the ProCamera App widget is great for on-site use, Sun Surveyor is a great app for planning ahead.
ProCamera App Widget with Blue Hour timings
ProCamera App is an excellent camera app with tons of awesome features. I've been using it for years. Check out my ProCamera App Review if you're curious about it.
ProCamera app comes with a free widget. From that widget, you can either launch ProCamera app in any mode, plus it displays the beginning and end of the blue hour.
ProCamera App widget with blue hour timings
To use this ProCamera widget, make sure you have ProCamera App installed:
- Swipe left from your home screen to display all the widgets you have enabled.
- Scroll down to the bottom of the list and tap Edit. The Add Widget* Screen will open.
- Under More Widgets find the ProCamera widget and tap the plus symbol. Then tap Done in the upper right corner of the screen
Now, locate the ProCamera App widget you've just added. You may need to tap Show more icon in the upper right corner inside the widget, and it will expand, showing the time of sunrise and sunset as well as the time when the blue hour begins and ends at your current location.
Adding the ProCamera widget to your widget screen on iPhone
It's a great and simple way to determine the blue hour if you're already on site.
But if you want or need to plan ahead, there's another solution I prefer. With that solution, you're able to set the time to anything in the future and select the location you plan to photograph. This app is called Sun Surveyor App.
Sun Surveyor App helps you to discover then the golden hour and the blue hour starts
This blue hour calculator is actually only a feature of Sun Surveyor App.
Using this feature, you can determine all the essential times like sunrise, blue hour, golden hour, and sunset for any geographic location in the future.
Sun Surveyor will even tell you where the sun will be and in which direction the shadows will fall during the day, and if you enter the height of an object, it will even tell you how long the shadow will be. Fantastic, isn't it?
Moreover, Sun Surveyor App allows you to:
• Find the location of the sun and the moon using augmented reality. • Identify photo opportunities of, e.g., full moon, crescent moon, visible milky way.
And here's how to find the beginning and end for the blue hour for any location, date, and time with Sun Surveyor App:
- In the menu in the upper left corner, tap Map
- In the upper right corner, tap the current location. A screen will appear. In that screen, tap Search and search for the desired location. If you can't find the exact location, try a nearby city.
- Now tap, hold and move the map. A red crosshair appears in the middle of the map. Place it exactly on the desired location.
- Sun Surveyor will display the current date, time, and timeline, which contains the beginning and end times for the golden and blue hours and the time for sunrise and sunset.
- Now, to plan ahead, tap the date in the lower-left corner and choose any future date. Tap ok
- The timeline at the bottom will update with the proper timings.
Golden and Blue Hour in Sun Surveyor App
Now you can predict the future. At least for the proper time of sunrise, sunset, blue hour, and golden hour. One thing that Sun Surveyor doesn't do is to take into account is the weather.
Conclusion
The ProCamera App widget and Sun Surveyor are two great apps that will help you to find the beginning and end of the blue hour and golden hour. While I recommend and use the ProCamera widget on-site, I mainly use Sun Surveyor to plan ahead.
With the possibility to see the position of the sun for any given location, date, and time in the future, I consider this app inevitable for planning ahead for shooting with iPhone.
Sun Surveyor is available from the App Store. If you're curious about ProCamera, head over to my ProCamera App review or get ProCamera from the App Store.
