UN vs Light Meter Classic

This UN ASIGN application has been developed by AnsuR for crowd sourcing Geo referenced photos and text from areas affected by larger humanitarian disasters to the United Nations entity UNITAR/UNOSAT. Seconds after you send a geo-picture it will be available in a map at the receiver side. The input of in situ visual information will help UNOSAT assess damages and situations from Space based satellite imagery in particular and will help various entities in the UN-system conduct operations. Selected images and data provided via this application will be integrated into professional on-line mapping portals and will normally be made available to the public. Contributors by definition will allow use of the images and data for non commercial purposes related to managing the disasters they are related to. They will not be used commercially. Images provided by the Crowd will help affected countries, UN, EC, Red Cross family and NGOs to make better and faster decisions in disaster management. Please add text to describe the photos. Your input is being received at a UN server in hosted by CERN in Geneva and images are being assessed by OCHA and UNITAR/UNOSAT, as the information is useful for both effective co-ordination as well as validation of satellite image analysis related to natural disasters. The photos are automatically time-stamped and geo-referenced (geo-pictures). GPS is most precise, but basically only works outdoors, hence the ASIGN solution also includes positioning via cellular and Wi-Fi networks. Photos are compressed significantly to save time, cost and bandwidth, but higher resolution parts can be automatically requested later if needed, in which case the photo-provider is notified with an SMS if the phone number is properly registered. Please note how this is done. As a user of this application you will also be able to log in to the ASIGN server and view your own photos. There is a TEST-switch, so do not be afraid to try it out. UN-ASIGN has been developed by AnsuR, as part of a European FP7 Funded Project Called GEO-PICTURES, and is being operated in collaboration with UNITAR/UNOSAT. This application is a simplified version of ASIGN, that been developed by AnsuR as a professional tool for disaster management and early responders.

A reflected-light meter for film photography. It uses the phone camera as its sensor, lets you choose exactly which part of the frame to measure, and works out the ISO / aperture / shutter combination to set on your camera — restricted to the values that camera actually has. It exists for the situations a film camera's own meter gets wrong: a face against a bright window, a subject lit from behind, a stage. Those are exactly the cases where averaging the whole frame throws the exposure away, and where being able to say "measure here, not there" fixes it. MEASURE WHERE YOU WANT • SPOT — a small area, for a face or a shadow • CENTRE — weighted three-to-one towards the middle • AVG — the whole frame • BOX — drag to move it, drag the corner to resize it The preview is a 3:2 window: the frame a 35mm camera gets, whatever the shape of your screen. SOLVES FOR THE SETTING YOU NEED One setting is computed, the other two you set by hand. Each of the three tiles carries its own AUTO switch — tap AUTO on aperture and the app finds the aperture; tap it on shutter and it finds the shutter. One button hands both to the app at once. Every value the app returns is one your camera has. Settings holds three ranges — shutter, aperture, film speed — each with its own step size (full, half or third stops), a bulb switch, and the speed below which to warn you about camera shake. That covers any body and lens without a library of them. FREEZE Hold a reading so you can recompose without it changing. The value turns blue and the label reads FROZEN. MULTI-SPOT AND ZONES Store several readings with + SPOT and the app places the scene midway between its extremes, rather than letting any one reading pull the exposure to middle grey. Each stored reading is shown as a zone against the chosen exposure. CALIBRATION A phone differs from a reference meter by a fixed amount. Measure it once — fill the frame with an evenly lit surface, dial in what a camera you trust says, and save the point. Check at a few light levels and add a point where it is out; the app interpolates between them. Calibration is keyed to the phone and lens, so it stays true across sessions, and exports to JSON so it can be backed up or moved to another phone. The readout shows CAL +0.42 when an offset is being applied, or NO CAL when there is none — so you always know which you are looking at. No offsets are shipped for devices that have not been measured. An invented number is worse than none, because it looks like a measurement. RECIPROCITY AND FILM Long exposures need more time than the maths alone says. Where a manufacturer publishes the figure for a film, the app applies it; where none is published, it applies nothing rather than guessing. SHOT LOG Keep what you metered and what you set, so a roll can be read back later. NO ACCOUNT, NO NETWORK, NO TRACKING Nothing is uploaded. The camera is used to meter light and nothing else — no photo is captured, stored or sent.