Tales on Film

A couple of months ago I started a serie of articles about the different lightmeter apps you find on the iPhone, but I forgot to finish it. I’m going to pick that up again, but if you haven’t seen the previous posts yet, go check them out at part I and part II.

Today I’m talking about the iLightmeter app, the app costs 1,59 euro, which is very acceptable considering the features. It has spot metering, average metering, aperture priority, shutter speed priority and even ev difference with the set aperture and shutter speed. Especially the last is pretty convenient when shooting with cameras with a fixed aperture and shutter speed (read Lomography or toy cameras)

The interface resembles the look of a digital light meter, but I’m not sure if that’s such a wise choice. As the iPhone as so much more capabilities compared to the simple interface of a manual light meter. It takes a while to get used to and but after you learn to use it. It works pretty ok. The good thing about the interface is that you can see what you are measuring and read out the result directly by pushing the measure button.

While the measurements given by iLightmeter are quite ok, they are almost always off by a 2/3 of a stop, but you can correct for that very easily, by knowing how much it’s off. It’s nice that you see the scene you’re measuring, but because you don’t actually take photos, you can’t go back and see what your latest reading was. This could be handy if you want to take multiple measurements to get an average of the shadows and highlights.

Overall it’s a pretty nice app and if you need a light meter with spotmetering or ev difference, this one will definitely do the trick.

I do develop my own black and white film at home. There is not much too it, but one thing is very important, timing how long you develop. The timing is different for every film, asa and developer. Luckily there is the Massive dev chart. But you still need to check time yourself, keep track when to turn, this can be a hassle.

But when you have an iPhone you’re in luck, the guys of the digitaltruth have released the massive dev chart as an iPhone app. Not only did they include all the data from the dev chart but there are timers included for every stage of the development process.

The app even has a temperature vs time conversion. You can save favourites, but you can also adjust the times, settings and about anything. To help you remember when to turn, it gives sound aids and an alarm when your timer runs out.

The 5,99 euro is totally worth it, so head over to the iOs app store and download it.

Next up in my series of iPhone as light meter, I’m giving you a review of the app Pocket Light Meter. I’ll be honest, I don’t really use this app a lot.

Pocket Light Meter

The app is free, so at least it won’t cost you a thing, but you’ll have to bear with the ads they are showing. It’s already improved that the ad doesn’t pop up anymore, but as you can see it’s not very pretty in their design. The screen is very simple, you can lock each of the settings individually. The instant updates, while you are pointing you’re iPhone to the scene are nice, but are a 2-edged sword. It’s very easy, because you have no delay in measuring, but you’ll get updates, all the time when measuring, so you have to keep the phone pretty still to have a consistent reading.

While using the measurements given by Pocket Light Meter are quite ok, they are almost always off by a stop and very often the app says, too dark, which means that you don’t get accurate results. It’s nice that you see the scene you’re measuring, but because you don’t actually take photos, you can’t go back and see what your latest reading was. This could be handy if you want to take multiple measurements to get an average of the shadows and highlights.

Overall it’s a pretty nice app and if you want a light meter for free on your phone, this one will do the trick, but keep in mind that you have to correct for it’s flaws.

If you want to find out more about the iPhone light meter apps, check out my other posts at Part I

With a lot of analog cameras you need a light meter, that’s because the camera doesn’t have a build in one. You can estimate the light with the sunny 16 rule but that’s just an educated guess at the available light conditions.

A better option is to use a light meter, but you will see, you don’t have one handy whenever you need one. When you’re an iPhone user, you’re in luck. In the AppStore you can find a couple of apps that will help you. I’m going to review the different apps I tested till date in a series of posts. Below is one of my favourites.

Fancy Light Meter

I like this one because you can select up to three points to meter. So in a very short period you can measure for the shadows, highlights and the subject. The extra nice thing the app gives you, is an average for your measurements. This enables you to choose an exposure that doesn’t blow out the highlights, but also doesn’t completely black outs the shadows. Compared to a regular light meter this apps stacks up pretty nice, I tried it in several situation against two different light meters and it was off at most by a half stop. The only problem that I had with this app, but also with others is that it’s not accurate anymore once you need more then a 2 second exposure.

Some of the features:

• Library with pictures you measured, with the info below the photo
• Ability to lock aperture or shutter time
• iso range from 25 to 3200
• aperture from 1.0 to 64
• shutter time selection from 8″ till 1/8000th
• Large frame to select points
• when you change one of the option, the rest changes accordingly