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About this tool
Record a location with real sun direction, golden hour times and a weighted score for noise, power, access and permission.
This scouting tool records a location alongside the sun's actual position there, using the NOAA solar position equations to give sunrise, solar noon, sunset, golden hour and blue hour for the exact date and coordinates you enter, plus the sun's elevation and compass bearing at your planned shoot time. It then scores the location across eight criteria weighted by how often each one ruins a shoot — noise and permission count most. Built for anyone doing a recce who needs the note to survive the walk back to the car.
Open Location Scout Notes Builder on AltFTool — it loads instantly in your browser.
Add your input to the workspace.
Adjust the options until the result looks right.
Copy or download the output and put it to work.
Sun elevation and bearing come from the NOAA algorithm, not a generic sunrise table.
Noise and permission carry weight 5 because they cannot be fixed on the shoot day.
Anything rated two or below is listed back with the weight it carries.
You need the date, the time, and the latitude and longitude of the spot. The tool returns a compass bearing and a height above the horizon — for example in London on 21 June the sun is roughly 9° up bearing 64° (east-north-east) at 06:00 and due south at about 62° at solar noon.
Golden hour is the period when the sun is between the horizon and about 6° elevation, so its length depends entirely on latitude and season. Near the equator it can be under half an hour; at 51° north in midsummer it stretches well past an hour, and at high latitudes it can last most of the evening.
Noise first, because you cannot fix it in post: traffic, an aircraft path, air conditioning, fridges. Then permission and who signs it, mains power and how far the cable run is, light direction and whether you can switch the overheads off, load-in and parking, the space between subject and background, and a wet-weather fallback.
They are accurate to about a minute at mid latitudes, and they assume a flat, unobstructed horizon at sea level. Hills, buildings and trees take the light earlier than the calculation says, so treat the numbers as the outer limit and walk the site at roughly the shoot time if you can.