Film photography apps?

ChrisR

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A while ago I posted this on the LF Zero to Hero thread:

Not sure quite how, but I found this Youtube video of an American talking about the iPhone apps he uses to support his large format photography. An interesting watch, see
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swxX_nn4VzU


The main (iPhone) apps he mentions are Fstop, Holders, TPE, Massive Dev Chart, and the Reciprocity Timer app (which seems to have lots of info about the effects of bellows extension, filters etc as well as reciprocity failure).

I thought this was interesting, and I have actually got an tried a few of these. I did look around and the only thread I can find dedicated to this topic had a few posts back in 2011; I guess I could have revived it, but this gives me a bit of extra control, so I can add more things in here (like apps folk really like, links etc).
 
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One of these that really looked quite interesting was Holders, which was supposed to help keep track of what film is in which DDS, and add information like exposure, notes etc. A number of people said they use physical note books for this sort of thing... which is a good thing as it appears this app is no longer available!

So far, I've been making field notes using Evernote, which has the added benefit of transferring them to my Mac automagically. I wonder if there's a way of creating standard forms for Evernote, to act as reminders!

A bit off topic for this thread, but I've also just downloaded Tim Layton's free large format index cards (or at least the PDF to print them). Look good, but I'm unlikely to be able to find the pencil in the field!

Does anyone know of an app similar to but replacing Holders?
 
I've also got F-Stop, which I'm finding quite useful for working out depth of field for the 135mm lens on my Chroma. The app is free, IIRC, and is very useful but a bit annoying. It remembers that I'm considering a 4x5 film size, but doesn't remember the 135mm lens, so I have to scroll up from the default which seems to be 3.6 mm!

ETA this one isn't really to do with film photography, it applies under all circumstances... but it's still useful given the novel territory of LF...
 
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The other one that I'm find really useful as I start out in LF is Reciprocity Timer. This one was a paid app, £1.99 I think. There are some options to unlock additional features that I haven't explored yet. It appears there is a Pro version for £9.99, so far I've found there's a Note Taker and Camera info that are in the Pro version but not the basic. Maybe more.

So, you tell it your film, your metered exposure, exposure compensation, filters, bellows extension etc, and it gives you an exposure time. Brilliant! Specially so with Fomapan 100, with what @steveo_mcg describes as it's "comedy" reciprocity characteristic (starting at 1/2 seconds IIRC). It will even time the exposure for you, if you can master the art of opening the shutter and pressing a smart phone on-screen button at the same time! (So far, I can't, so count... elephants instead!)
 
Try exposure Assistant much cheaper than £2 and does everything you just described. For pressing the shutter and smart phone, when you're in to a few minutes a few seconds here and there makes no real difference.
 
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Thanks for the info; I will have a look at Reciprocity Timer and Exposure Assistant. Bellows extension is something I usually forget about, but having said that I'm rarely focussing close (which would extend the bellows more) when out in the the field doing landscape work.

I do have TPE but I find the mobile interface too confusing and didn't actually use it on my last week in Scotland (having said that there wasn't much sun anyway).

I also use Viewfinder which allows me to preview the field of view with any of my lenses in 4x5, 6x9, 6x7, 6x6, 6x4.5 and 35mm
 
I like the sound of Viewfinder.

The only app I have (so far) is the light meter, Lux.
 
I also use Viewfinder which allows me to preview the field of view with any of my lenses in 4x5, 6x9, 6x7, 6x6, 6x4.5 and 35mm
I like the sound of Viewfinder.

Is that the one that's £24.99?

I decided (ever one for the cheapskate solution) that for my one lens I could cut a piece out of a bit of cardboard to the required size and hold it in front of the iPhone screen! Mind you, I'll have to calibrate it first, just need to remember to take an iPhone shot from the same position as my next LF shot...
 
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Can you tell me if the Reciprocity app has Rollei 400 IR & Ilford SFX film in there?

Reason I ask is that I've just sent 4 rolls off with a suite of test shots of these films to try and determine their long exposure properties and it might be interesting to compare.

Edit to add - I made my own notebook in Blurb. £2.50 a pop and much more analogue :)
 
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Is that the one that's £24.99?

I decided (ever one for the cheapskate solution) that for my one lens I could cut a piece out of a bit of cardboard to the required size and hold it in front of the iPhone screen! Mind you, I'll have to calibrate it first, just need to remember to take an iPhone shot from the same position as my next LF shot...

Ah, I've just found Viewfinder Preview at a much more affordable $2.99... says it also includes a lightmeter. Same author apparently also has a Darkroom Timer app, with fully customisable recipes, which might sort out some of my issues with the Massive Dev Chart app (but my issues may also be due to simply misunderstanding!).
 
Can you tell me if the Reciprocity app has Rollei 400 IR & Ilford SFX film in there?

Reason I ask is that I've just sent 4 rolls off with a suite of test shots of these films to try and determine their long exposure properties and it might be interesting to compare.

Edit to add - I made my own notebook in Blurb. £2.50 a pop and much more analogue :)

Yes to Ilford SFX 200, but no to any Rollei films AFAICS. Bit of a bummer that, though I don't use them. Does include Shanghai GP3, and some Adox, Arsita and Efke 25. Otherwise it's Fomapan, Fujifilm, Ilford and Kodak.

Can you remember any of the exposure details for the SFX, I could look them up for you!
 
Ah, I've just found Viewfinder Preview at a much more affordable $2.99... says it also includes a lightmeter. Same author apparently also has a Darkroom Timer app, with fully customisable recipes, which might sort out some of my issues with the Massive Dev Chart app (but my issues may also be due to simply misunderstanding!).

This Viewfinder Preview app seems to have been released only this year, written by a bloke in Edinburgh. It has a thread on a LF forum at http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?145417-iPhone-Viewfinder-app . Seems to be in active development; you can now add wide angle lenses to your iPhone to cover wider focal lengths, and he appears to have some sort of visual notebook feature (which could be useful for remembering exactly where you took each shot). I'm beginning to think it might be quite a good buy!

ETA oh, he says the lightmeter is an average meter, but you can point to an area and it becomes a spotmeter. Taking that with a grain of salt, but interesting.
 
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This Viewfinder Preview app seems to have been released only this year, written by a bloke in Edinburgh. It has a thread on a LF forum at http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?145417-iPhone-Viewfinder-app . Seems to be in active development; you can now add wide angle lenses to your iPhone to cover wider focal lengths, and he appears to have some sort of visual notebook feature (which could be useful for remembering exactly where you took each shot). I'm beginning to think it might be quite a good buy!

ETA oh, he says the lightmeter is an average meter, but you can point to an area and it becomes a spotmeter. Taking that with a grain of salt, but interesting.

That is the same app I'm using. Is the "visual notebook feature" not the same thing as taking a shot with the app ?
 
Can you remember any of the exposure details for the SFX, I could look them up for you!

It was a simple (unscientific) test of bracketing exposures by up to +3 for a bunch of shutter speeds, so I won't know what the results are until I get the negs back to see what's exposed properly and what isn't. The ilford datasheet states 'measured exposure to the power of 1.43' for times over a second (SFX), but the Internet reckons that's just wrong. Bracketing when I'm getting 10 shots a roll (or even worse 4) is something I want to avoid so I'm doing my own tests.
Once I've got the results though, I'll probably put up a thread and tag you to see what your app says.
 
... So far, I've been making field notes using Evernote, which has the added benefit of transferring them to my Mac automagically. I wonder if there's a way of creating standard forms for Evernote, to act as reminders!

A bit off topic for this thread, but I've also just downloaded Tim Layton's free large format index cards (or at least the PDF to print them). Look good, but I'm unlikely to be able to find the pencil in the field! ...

As far as I can see, forms are available in Evernote as templates; there are about 30 basic templates you can use at the free level, but none suitable. However, you can't create your own template (eg like those Tim Layton index cards) unless you upgrade to one of the paying subscription levels. Can't remember how much this is, but probably quite a lot more than the price of a simple app!

It looks like Apple Notes also doesn't have forms or templates apart from a few very basic ones.
 
The Massive Dev Cart app is another favourite, I gather, though I've only used it once. That was for my last dev session, the first go with LF tacos in the new Paterson tank, and it worked a treat. However, tomorrow I hope to dev a 35mm film and for this I'll use the Rondinax, which means dev times reduced by 15%. I could see a way of changing the dev time, but not a way to have two dev times (and different agitation regimes) for the same film/developer combination (something like this might also be needed for s second dev session with re-used chems, eg devving 4 LF sheets in pairs, one after the other, where the time for the second pair has to increase).

Have I missed an obvious way to do this sort of thing?
 
The Massive Dev Cart

I wish I wasn't too drink to think of a suitable joke for this....anyone....anyone?
 
I thought I saw a reference somewhere on t'internet on someone in your situation with Holders who found a way to get it back, something about going back through previous purchases?

I'm pretty sure that if you've sync'd to your PC/Mac with a previous purchase then there's a hack to get it back, unfortunately I've only ever backed up via iCloud :(
 
The Massive Dev Cart app is another favourite, I gather, though I've only used it once. That was for my last dev session, the first go with LF tacos in the new Paterson tank, and it worked a treat. However, tomorrow I hope to dev a 35mm film and for this I'll use the Rondinax, which means dev times reduced by 15%. I could see a way of changing the dev time, but not a way to have two dev times (and different agitation regimes) for the same film/developer combination (something like this might also be needed for s second dev session with re-used chems, eg devving 4 LF sheets in pairs, one after the other, where the time for the second pair has to increase).

Have I missed an obvious way to do this sort of thing?

You just create separate entries and give them meaningful names: "Film X, Dev Y, Rondinax", "Film X, Dev Y, Paterson", etc. Same for things like push or pull processes. I have entries for the same film in HC-110 at Dilution B, and at my preferred 1+49.
 
The Massive Dev Cart app is another favourite, I gather, though I've only used it once. That was for my last dev session, the first go with LF tacos in the new Paterson tank, and it worked a treat. However, tomorrow I hope to dev a 35mm film and for this I'll use the Rondinax, which means dev times reduced by 15%. I could see a way of changing the dev time, but not a way to have two dev times (and different agitation regimes) for the same film/developer combination (something like this might also be needed for s second dev session with re-used chems, eg devving 4 LF sheets in pairs, one after the other, where the time for the second pair has to increase).

Have I missed an obvious way to do this sort of thing?

I do this by editing the name so that one reads, eg "Ilford FP4+ in HC110 in Jobo" and has a time of 7m40s" and the other reads "Ilford FP4+ in HC110" with a time of 9m
 
I do this by editing the name so that one reads, eg "Ilford FP4+ in HC110 in Jobo" and has a time of 7m40s" and the other reads "Ilford FP4+ in HC110" with a time of 9m

I managed to do the edit, saved it, then couldn't find it. Eventually did the whole thing the way I used to, just using the timer on the phone. However, I did the dilution B calculation wrong, based on 300 ml rather than 200 ml, so ended up putting in around 9 ml of stock rather than 6! I presume I've rather over-cooked it (drying now). The negatives do look nice and contrasty!

After I'd finished I found my edited settings under "My Times", d'oh!
 
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