How to plan your first shot
Goal: put what you are shooting and where you will stand on the map, and see where the sun, moon and Milky Way core will be.
Steps
- Tap Explore in the tab bar. On a phone you land on the Explore page; tap Start a plan on the map card. On an iPad the map opens straight away.
- The first time, a short tour shows you around. Follow it, or tap Skip. Show me around on the Explore page replays it.
- Select your subject. Tap it on the map. The first tap selects the subject.
- Set your camera position. Tap where you will shoot from. The next tap sets the camera, and a wedge shows what your lens sees.
- Drag the hour scrubber in the time sheet at the bottom. The sun, moon and Milky Way core move across the map as you drag.
- To change a pin, tap it for its menu: move it, swap the two, copy its coordinates or remove it.
What you will see
- The sun and moon bars run from your camera along the day’s rise and set directions, each with a flag.
- The sun, moon and Milky Way core are drawn on the map where they are at the chosen time.
- If a pin is off screen, an arrow at the edge points to it.
Tip
You usually know the subject before you know the Location, so select it first and treat the camera pin as a first guess. Move it as often as you like: undo and redo sit under the top-left button.
If something looks off
- My first tap placed the subject, not the camera. That is on purpose: the subject comes first, the camera second. The subject and camera buttons in the right-hand stack let you place either one yourself.
- The pin sits beside a steep peak or a tall building on Satellite. Satellite photos are taken at an angle, so tall things can look tens of metres from where they stand. Zoom in and place the pin on the base, then check it in the 3D world.
- The map is blank in a place I have never looked at. The sky needs no connection, but the map imagery for a new area does. See Offline behavior.