I’ve become a huge fan of the following iPhone apps. Here’s my plug (I wish I got a cut).
Helio: Right now this is my favorite by far. It’s a sunrise/sunset calculator that includes what other sunrise/sunset apps lack and that’s a shadow ratio calculation. The app gives you a multiplier that you use against the height of an object to calculate the length of a shadow at any time of the day. If for example you want to know how long a shadow will be at 7PM on the 4th of July at the location 34°5′ by -118°19′, the multiplier would be 4.66. So if you have an object that’s 1.5m tall, the length of the shadow that object would cast is 7m long. Very useful for pre-production and production planning. It also has a handy inclinometer for determining the location of the sun in the sky. Sweet.
MatchLens: Also a great little app when using a DSLR camera to take recce location photos. I can take a photo with my point-and-shoot G10 and if we like the shot and want to reproduce it on the day, the app will calculate the focal length for the shooting lens based on the lens I used on my G10. So if the G10 takes a photos using a 6.1mm focal length and I’m shooting a show with the Red One camera at 4K, the lens I would put on the Red is 17.8 or an 18mm lens. Fantastic.
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