Comparison

Minimal Light Meter vs Film Development Assistant

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Minimal Light Meter

This app offers precise light metering with a streamlined interface and a dimmable camera view. It allows for fully customizable ISO settings, ensuring accuracy with non-standard film stocks.

Highlights
  • Accurate light metering
  • Intuitive user interface
  • Dimmable camera view
  • Custom ISO settings
  • Support for non-standard ISO
Features
Read full description

It provides accurate light metering with an intuitive UI and a dimmable camera view to focus only on what's important. Additionally, it supports a fully custom ISO setting so you can be confident working with non-standard ISO ratings on old or expired film stocks.

About

Film Development Assistant

This app helps amateur photographers track their film development chemicals and sessions. It monitors chemical batch expiration, usage, and provides multi-stage timers for development processes. Users can also record notes on session quality for future reference.

Highlights
  • Chemical batch tracking
  • Expiration date monitoring
  • Session tracking
  • Multi-stage development timers
  • Chemical usage calculation
  • Session notes and quality tracking
Features
Read full description

Film Development Assistant provides advanced features for every at-home photographic film developer! Reduce your risk of development issues by keeping track of your chemical batches and development sessions in the app. Our ever-evolving database of home development chemicals makes it easy to track the expiration dates of your mixed chemical batches based on the suggested shelf life from the manufacturer. Once you have your chemicals mixed, you can create sessions to track how many rolls/sheets of film you are developing, and the app will track the chemical usage for you so that you don't forget how much chemical capacity you have remaining! The visual progress indicators for your chemical batch freshness are a very useful tool for keeping track of your chemicals and making sure you either use them before expiration, or prevent yourself from using already expired or depleted chemicals. With each session, you can open a multi-stage timer to track the time for each stage of development. No more creating different timers by hand with the default timer app on your phone! And if you associate an existing chemical batch with each stage, the app will automatically adjust the development times of those stages based on the previous usage of your chemicals (or you can adjust the times manually). When you finish your sessions, you can take notes about how your session went so that you can learn from your home development process over time. You can keep track of the quality of the session and add your own notes to reference later.

Screenshots

Minimal Light Meter3 screens
Film Development Assistant3 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: Film Development Assistant at Free against Minimal Light Meter's $0.99. Minimal Light Meter's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 2). On rating, ratings volume, update cadence and ads 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Film Development Assistant is free to download; Minimal Light Meter costs $0.99 up front. Film Development Assistant sells 2 one-off in-app purchases. Minimal Light Meter asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for Minimal Light Meter against 5.0 for Film Development Assistant. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 2 and 3 respectively.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Minimal Light Meter ships an update every 19 months, Film Development Assistant every 10 months. The most recent releases landed on October 27, 2026 and October 12, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences · 7 level
Minimal Light Meter versus Film Development Assistant: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterMinimal Light MeterFilm Development Assistant
Price$0.99Free — better
Rating5.0 (2 ratings)5.0 (3 ratings)
Positive reviews100.0% of reviews—
Number of ratings23 — better
Update frequencyEvery 19 monthsEvery 10 months — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
MonetizationPaidFree with in-app purchases — better
DevicesiPhoneiPhone
Requires iOS17.017.0
Further details — not scored
Size0 MB6 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperJack KrollZachary Burns

Customer experience

Minimal Light Meter

All ratings2 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews1 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

Film Development Assistant

All ratings3 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

In-app purchases

None

Minimal Light Meter

No in-app purchases

2 purchases

Film Development Assistant

One-time2
  • 7 Day Free TrialFree
  • Film Development Assistant Pro$4.99

Questions

Is Minimal Light Meter free?
Minimal Light Meter costs $0.99, with no in-app purchases.
Is Film Development Assistant free?
Film Development Assistant is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, Minimal Light Meter or Film Development Assistant?
Minimal Light Meter and Film Development Assistant are both rated 5.0 out of 5 on the App Store, from 2 and 3 ratings respectively.
Do Minimal Light Meter or Film Development Assistant have ads?
Neither Minimal Light Meter nor Film Development Assistant shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Minimal Light Meter or Film Development Assistant?
Minimal Light Meter ships an update every 19 months, and Film Development Assistant every 10 months. Most recently, Minimal Light Meter was updated on October 27, 2026 and Film Development Assistant on October 12, 2026.

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