Hey Everyone! Hope you're having a great week! This week I want to talk about 3 smart phone apps that I use while doing film photography. I have fallen back in love with film photography and do it as much as I do digital photography. I love the challenge and the analog machines that I capture images with. But I also like modern technology and use it to help with the older cameras and film.  I have 3 apps that I have that I use regularly to help me. With the cost of film I try to get it as right as I can the first time and not make as many silly mistakes that I often do with digital.  Theses apps help me visualize, properly expose and develop the film that I am using. 

Visualize, The first app that I use is"Viewfinder". This app helps me visualize the scene even before I take my camera out. It's a framing tool that you can put the aspect ratio of your camera , the lens and even the film that you are using. You can program it to act like your cameras for example one of my cameras is a Bronica 645. If I am using Kodak Tri-X film and a 75mm lens it will show you exactly what you will get with your camera. So it's great for Framing and finding the composition before you take out your camera . When you have the composition that you want then you can set up your camera and take the shot. This is a new app for me but I really like it. Especially when I'm shooting black and white film it lets me know what the scene will look like. On my digital camera's I can do this in camera but not with the film cameras. In color it's not as an aid as in black and white but still is useful in framing the composition you want. This is not a free app I think it cost 5 bucks one time purchase and can be used with IOS and Android phones.

Expose, I use "myLightMeter Pro" app. Using a good light meter with
film is a must. Most of my cameras have built in light meters but the cameras are old and don't always give you a good exposure. I have hand held meters that work great but this one in a pinch or as a backup is great. You can calibrate it to your specific lenses and film. You can also calibrate it to a handheld meter to make sure it's accurate. This works great when I'm shooting street or something where I want to be lightweight because I don't have to carry an extra meter just my phone that I have on me all of the time anyway. You can make the app look like an old fashioned meter or a modern meter and you can move the dials around after you have metered the scene and apertures and shutter speeds move around to correspond to your choices. They have a free version I think but I bought the pro version for 10 bucks one time purchase and can be used with IOS and Android phones.

Develop, I use "Massive Dev Chart" to help when developing. You can get this free online website and what it does is helps with measurements and times of all the chemicals used when developing film. The app does the same and also has built in timers to help with the process. I use this mainly with Black and White photography. My color photography process is pretty set in stone and works great. Black and White film is much more flexible and you can use many chemicals, times and processes. This app tells you the developing time, delusion, and other aspects of all of the film stocks and speeds of films. So if you're using Ilford film it has the times delusions and formulas already figured out for all of the types of chemicals you can be using. This app is available for IOS and Android and is free I believe.

I highly recommend all three of these apps. There a many apps out there and I assume all of them are pretty good these are the three that I chose and can recommend. They make life much easier than it used to be before the internet and you had to go to a library or find a book for all of this stuff.  Thanks to these apps my film photography adventure still continues and it's a lot easier. Until next week Get out and Shoot! 

Hey if you want to check out my photography go to my instagram account Max Stansell Photography there are over 2000 post there. Here is the link

 Max Stansell Photography Instagram Link