Long Light

Long Light is a free photography planning app that runs in your web browser. There is nothing to install and no account to create.

Pick any place and moment on a draggable map to see where the sun and moon rise, set and travel, with moon phase, golden and blue hour times, and the Milky Way window.

A first-person view of the night sky shows when the galactic core stands in a properly dark sky and where the moon is; drag through the night to find the window. On a phone, the same sky can be laid over the camera view, aimed by the phone's compass and tilt.

For alignment shots, put one pin where you will stand and one on a landmark to find the dates and minutes the sun, the moon or the galactic core stands behind it, or, for a fixed date, where you need to stand.

Camera planning covers depth of field (the sharp zone drawn to scale, with the hyperfocal distance one press away), motion blur (a moving subject's streak in a simulated viewfinder, and the shutter speed that freezes it), and the exposure and time-lapse arithmetic for ND filters and clips.

Everything is computed on your device. Settings are remembered in the browser, and a planner view can be shared as a link. The methods and their tested tolerances are documented on the site; moon positions are verified against US Naval Observatory data.