This App is a Light Meter vs Light Lamb
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
This App is a Light Meter
This app transforms your phone into a light meter for pinhole photography. It helps calculate precise exposure times and includes a timer and inverter for developing your negatives.
- Light meter for pinhole cameras
- Calculates exposure time
- Integrated timer
- Negative inverter
- Works with any pinhole camera
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Take the guesswork out of calculating your pinhole camera’s exposure time by using your phone or tablet as a light meter. The meter is designed to work with any pinhole camera, and its particularly well suited for Kelli Anderson’s ‘This Book is a Camera.’ Includes a timer to count down every second to your ideal exposure, and an inverter to reveal the final image of your pinhole negative.
Light Lamb
This app acts as a light meter for film photographers, offering both automatic and manual control over camera settings. It helps ensure correct exposure by suggesting adjustments based on your chosen parameters and scene conditions. Features include spot metering, safe shutter speed awareness, and the ability to save settings with scene photos.
- Automatic exposure mode for film cameras
- Assisted manual control of aperture, shutter, ISO
- Histogram for exposure visualization
- Safe shutter speed matching
- Spot metering with 5x zoom
- Customizable ISO, aperture, shutter speed ranges
- Save settings with scene photos and location
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Light Lamb is a free photographers’ light meter app for iOS. You can let Light Lamb decide everything for you like getting an auto mode for your manual film camera, or you could have full manual control of the parameters, or whatever you want in between. - Now with histogram (New in 1.3.0) Use the histogram to make sure the scene is exposed just like how you envisioned. - From full auto to assisted manual control In most cameras if you pick a parameter like aperture, shutter, or ISO, the camera would stick to your chosen values even if it's too dark or too bright for the scene. The reason we made Light Lamb is to have a light meter that would suggest different settings if the chosen parameters are not suitable. For example, you can keep your settings at f/8 and 1/125 for deep depth of field and fast shutter speed, but if it's too dark, Light Lamb would suggest brighter values to make sure it's correctly exposed. Or say you want to set the aperture to f/1.4 for shallow depth of field, and if it's bright outside and the shutter is already at its fastest speed, Light Lamb would suggest a smaller aperture. Just set the parameters to what you want and Light Lamb will handle the rest. - Safe shutter-aware Pick a preferred slowest shutter speed you want and Light Lamb will match it. If the scene is too dark, Light Lamb automatically pick a slower shutter speed beyond the safe shutter to achieve the correct exposure. - Spot metering Zoom in 5x to focus the measurements to small areas in contrasting scenes. - Match your equipment Choose the range and increment of ISO, aperture, and shutter speed to match your equipment. Choose between whole-stop, half-stop, and one-third EV increments for each parameter. - Keep a memo Keep a memo of the settings used, including a photo of the scene and the location. Export it as a beautiful picture note formatted in 4:5 aspect ratio, great for posting to Instagram along with your photo.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Light Lamb at 5.0 against This App is a Light Meter's 4.1. Light Lamb also leads on review sentiment (100% vs 78%). This App is a Light Meter's advantage is ratings volume (13 vs 1) and device support (3 vs 1). On price, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Light Lamb holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.1. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: This App is a Light Meter has 13 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 78% of This App is a Light Meter's written reviews are positive against 100% of Light Lamb's.
Both ship on a similar rhythm, roughly every 3 months. The most recent releases landed on August 23, 2026 and June 11, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | This App is a Light Meter | Light Lamb |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.1 (13 ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 77.8% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 13 — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Every 3 months | Every 3 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 12.1 — better | 17.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 10 MB | 4 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Oak Studios, LLC | CHUN YIN FUNG |
Customer experience
This App is a Light Meter
Light Lamb
In-app purchases
This App is a Light Meter
No in-app purchases
Light Lamb
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is This App is a Light Meter free?
Is Light Lamb free?
Which has better reviews, This App is a Light Meter or Light Lamb?
Do This App is a Light Meter or Light Lamb have ads?
Which is updated more often, This App is a Light Meter or Light Lamb?
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