Sunlitt: Possibly the best sun tracking app for iOS

We all say photography is the art of light, and natural light should be one of the most important light sources. Whether you’re a professional videographer or an amateur, you need to judge the best time to shoot based on the movement of the sun’s rays. Even if many people don’t have such an advanced need, they still know the existence of terms such as golden time and blues time. iOS platform actually has a lot of sun tracking apps, but there are only a few of them that can talk about how good they look and how well they work, and the emergence of Sunlitt basically puts an end to this difficult choice, because it really works well. Sunlitt has three main functions: tracking the position and path of the sun, predicting the shadows of objects in the light, and checking the time of solar events. Interestingly, Sunlitt is designed to present these three functions in three different modes, so that you can choose freely according to your needs.

The first mode is Monolitt, in which Sunlitt displays the sun’s path through a simple 3D model consisting of the ground, a small square, and the sun’s orbit, with the shadows cast on the ground by the small square changing as the sun travels through its orbit. sunlitt also makes use of the iPhone’s built-in gyroscope, so that as we turn the phone we can observe the shadows of objects in the light. turning the phone we can observe the shadows at different angles. On the left side of the screen, we see a date slider covering every day of the current year, which we can freely select, and on the right side of the screen, we see a time slider covering every minute of the day, which we can also freely select. Combining the two, we can get the sun’s movement at any moment of the current year and visualize the shadows of objects when they are illuminated by the sun’s rays. The second mode is the Explore mode. In this mode, we can drag the solar orbit model at will, and then combine the date and time sliders to get the sun’s motion at any point in time at the target location. In addition, Sunlitt offers 2D/3D perspective switching in Explore mode, with three map styles to choose from: shaded, satellite, and topographic.

The third mode is the Augmented Reality (AR) mode. When we pinpoint the location to our current position, Sunlitt will bring up the AR mode, which allows us to capture the image in front of us through the camera while seeing the sun’s orbit on the screen as it is displayed in the real world.Sunlitt also offers date and time selection for the AR mode, as well as a manual calibration feature that adjusts the azimuth to overlap the real sun with its AR model to achieve a more accurate view of the sun. Sunlitt also offers date and time selection for the AR mode, as well as a manual calibration feature that adjusts the azimuth to overlap the real sun with its AR model for a more accurate simulation.

Sunlitt also displays a great deal of information in the main interface. At the top, Sunlitt shows the azimuth and elevation of the current location; at the bottom, Sunlitt shows the current location and various information cards (which can be customized in the settings); and by clicking on any of the cards at the bottom, we can see various details about the current location, including the weather, the time of the solar event, the coordinates, and the elevation. Sunlitt also fully supports iOS features, including real-time activity, standby display, lock screen widgets, Apple Watch dials, etc., all of which are very nice to use. Sunlitt can be downloaded and used for free from the App Store, and a paid subscription unlocks the date slider and selector, full augmented reality, full sun information, weather forecast, and more, so you can be flexible and purchase it according to your usage.

Tournant: Build your own recipes to eat well

Time has come for summer, the season of being torn again and again between cooking for yourself, eating out and ordering takeout. Whether it’s the safety of the food and the need to control your weight, or the satisfaction of making your own food, cooking for yourself can be a laborious but healthy and fulfilling choice.

Once you’ve decided to cook for yourself, you’ll have to face the ultimate dilemma that we’ve all faced at one time or another: what’s for breakfast? What’s for lunch? What’s for dinner? A good alternative to aimlessly messing around with recipes or searching through cooking apps and video sites is to maintain a set of your own recipes, and Tournant is an app that allows you to keep track of your own recipes.

Once we open the app, all we have to do is to create our own personal recipes based on our experience or the posts we’ve collected. By clicking on Add New Recipe, we can edit the name and description of the dish and star it with our own favorites. The good thing about starring is that we can further filter out the recipes that we like the most.

The next thing to do is simply to fill in the content given by the app, one by one, and if your recipe comes from another website, you have the option to include the source for traceability. In addition, you can also add the preparation time and cooking time for the dish, so that you are well prepared to rationalize your cooking in the future. The next step is to add the required ingredients, and here the app gives you spaces to fill in, which makes the recording personal and free, rather than having to choose between various wheels or units. For example, you can add vague descriptions such as “a little bit of soy sauce”, which is sometimes difficult to quantify in Chinese cuisine. In addition, you can use the “Group” function to group the ingredients, such as simply grouping them by seasonings, vegetables, and meat, so that the preparation process can be more organized.

Once you’ve added the ingredients, you can work on the steps, and if you’re familiar with Markdown syntax, you can pick up simple markup language to make the cooking steps look clearer. Finally, you can add reminders to the recipe, such as notes about which family members are avoiding certain foods. Once we’ve completed the recipe, we can also have the app calculate the increase or decrease in ingredients by adjusting the amount of finished product. As we record more, we can also prioritize what to cook with the help of various ways to sort the recipes.

Overall, Tournant allows us to customize our recipes with complete autonomy, with the advantage of having very few restrictions on the recording process, and the disadvantage of having to maintain them manually, which requires patience and a long time of consistent recording. If you love to cook, enjoy cooking, or enjoy the satisfaction of having someone close to you eat your food, start creating your own personalized recipes. You can experience Tournant by downloading it via F-Droid, the app is open source and completely free.

DPBOX: Camera Parameter Toolbox

Today we are going to introduce this app called DPBOX, which can be called your portable photographic equipment dictionary, can help you quickly check the parameters of all kinds of photographic equipment and lenses, and find the most suitable photographic equipment for you in the shortest possible time.

DPBOX includes a wide range of video equipment, from entry-level machines to professional cinematography equipment, and allows you to see a camera’s maximum resolution, maximum frame rate, sensor, and dynamic range. You’ll also find information on shutter types, lens mounts, and native ISOs listed in detail, making it easy to choose lens accessories. As for the need to look up memory cards, maximum formats, audio interfaces, timecode interfaces, and video output interfaces that lean toward the professional realm, you’ll need to purchase an in-app purchase to unlock them for viewing.

As we mentioned earlier about camera parameters, we need to choose different lenses for different scenarios, after all, different brands of cameras don’t have the same lens mount, DPBOX also lists quite a lot of lens parameters, such as the lens type, optical characteristics, target aperture, and corresponding adapted format, and according to the focal length configuration, it lists the corresponding nearest focus, weight, aperture, and front diameter in detail. For lens and sensor modes, DPBOX also has a built-in Lens Coverage Calculator, which calculates the lens imaging aperture and the aperture required for recording based on the camera and lens you choose, and displays the sensor and aperture coverage directly, which is very intuitive.

Another useful tool is to calculate the volume of the final recorded file according to the selected camera, recording format and FPS, which is very useful for choosing the capacity of the memory card later, for example, if you need to record a medium-length video, then you need to minimize the number of times you need to change the memory card, using this calculator you can predict in advance how much space you will need to buy at least to complete this kind of work. The calculator allows you to predict in advance how much space you’ll need to buy to complete such a project. Overall, DPBOX is a very useful tool for photography enthusiasts, so if you’re one of them, you might want to give it a try – you can download it from the App Store.