Helios Sun, Moon, Star Pre-Viz

*update* Spoke with developers and understand the hardware limitations associated with this issue. I appreciate they seem to be doing all they can with every hardware release. Hopefully they keep pushing it forward. I’ve also done further comparisons and have realized sunseeker uses a few tricks to disguise their inaccuracies as well so the difference isn’t quite as severely as originally suspected. However I still continue to find sunseeker to be more accurate without user calibration. Big fan of the app and UI, but my main use for this app is live view and the app falls down there compared to its main rival “Sun seeker.” If I line up the sun and calibrate that way, I tend to get solid results but if I select use the compass I find the results to be significantly off. I’ve tested this in many environments over two phones (currently 11 Pro) and come away with consistently poor results. I find Sun seekers results to be much more reliable. I’m not sure how they calibrate vs the compass calibration Helios uses, but whatever they are doing I wish Helios would adapt. I’d much prefer to use this app only. Will keep testing, would love to hear the developers thoughts- no way they haven’t tested vs sun seeker internally...

The ability to fly a virtual drone with full controls over rendered topography, or 3D building mode during all points of the sun’s path, anytime of the year is indispensable for saving time setting up shots. The light pollution map is also very handy. However, the app is buggy and as of 3/1/19, the “virtual stars” mode is broken and will cause the app to crash on my iPhone X. The app can also crash if I take the virtual drone over mountainous ranges, and then over an urban environment very quickly while planning the camera up or down as the app seems to many times ‘struggle’ to keep loading the GPS tiles. Definitely hope the devs update these frustrating bugs and make it more capable as soon as possible, but if you’re in the market for a power photography app, don’t let these drawbacks dissuade you. Helios Pro has become one of my main go-to apps, even if I’m just shooting off my iPhone.

I’ve just started using this and after two days of experimenting I find that the saving the photos option is too slow. It’s a three step process for some reason and when you’re out in the bright light it’s not easy to see all the buttons. That aside the 3 D model in Live view is excellent. If you’re shooting a car commercial this is a must. It’s as accurate as sun seeker which is pretty accurate when using the compass, but not perfect. If you have the sun already out you can calibrate from that and then it is an excellent tool. I just hope they figure out the saving of the photos part, it’s the only thing I’m not crazy about with Artemis view finder too. It’s the only reason I didn’t give it five stars.