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Douglas Software is a company with photography at its core. Founded in 2001 by Douglas Green, a man with many years experience in photography, the company's aim was simple - to provide tools that photographers could use to improve their experience with a camera and help them to produce better images.

Douglas Software produces three key products that are unrivalled in their respective categories for accuracy and usability. Here, we'll run through each of these products and why you shouldn't be without them as a photographer:

The Douglas Grey Card

A classic in its field, the grey card is a simple yet effective idea that is still an essential part of any professional photographer's toolkit. 

It's used to ensure the colour balance is correct in your images, and helps with exposure management, contrast measurement, colour balancing and white balance. 

Now in its second generation, the card is made with the highest quality materials and uses advanced principles to enable 'one click' colour balancing of images then using post production software such as Photoshop. 

Douglas Grey Card Key Features:

• No artificial brighteners – which can distort exposure.
• Advanced, tough synthetic material – for years of use.
• Can be washed and therefore is suitable for medical use.
• Stain-free – unlike traditional card, the Douglas can be written on with a Chinagraph pencil or suitable markers, then cleaned with mild detergent or spray cleaner.
• Reflects the same proportion of all colours of light falling – including ultra-violet and the limit of visible red.
• More neutral reflectance than rival products – under the widest range of illumination, including tungsten, daylight, flash and warm fluorescent tubes.
• Trusted scientific principles – with new materials to provide better colour balancing of digital and conventional materials.
• Folded, the ‘Douglas’ is about A5 size – (8 1/2″ x 6″ / 210mm x 150mm) to fit snugly in your camera bag. Fully opened it is large enough to fill a 35mm camera viewfinder at 40 cm/1 ft 6 ins with a 50mm lens.

The Douglas Grey Card can be shipped worldwide and is available for less than £20, making it a real bargain for the amount of ease it will bring to your photographic process. 

Depth of Field and Hyperfocal Distance Calculator

Douglas' Depth of Field and Hyperfocal Distance Calculator makes it easy to achieve a perfectly exposed image simply by inputting some basic information. Whatever platform you use, whether Android, iOS, Mac or Windows, there is a version of the software available for you. It's also available in 5 different languages; English, French, Italian, German and Spanish, fast making and industry standard product worldwide. 

The software offers automatic calculation of depth of field for given values, as well as calculation of angle of view and the smallest aperture before diffraction reduces quality. 

A wide range of lenses and camera formats are supported and aperture values can be altered in 1/2 and 1/3 stop intervals, making it super versatile. The sheer amount of input options make the software stand out from rivals in the field and it's especially useful for those using a wide variety of camera formats. It's really easy to use and will surely make a valuable addition to any passionate photographer's phone or computer. There's even a demo version of the software so you can try before you buy. 

Sun & Moon Calculator

This is a solar and lunar database available for Windows. 

Not only will it tell you the rise and set times but also the angle of the sun and moon throughout the day, making it really easy to plan that trip to see the sun rise over your favourite spot or the best time for that twilight shot or when best to photograph an eclipse.

The software unlocks the secrets to working natural lighting, especially when working with architecture, to allow you to accurately calculate when and where shadows will appear. Make sure you know the exact times of dawn, dusk and twilight wherever you go to achieve brilliant results. 

In addition the distance of the moon from earth is shown so that the photographer can take advantage of ‘supermoons’.

The software comes with over 1600 preset locations for the USA, UK Canada, Australia and New Zealand including latitude, longitude and time zone, and you can create your own database for any location on earth. 

For further information, and to purchase any of these products, visit the Douglas Software website.