Long Exposure Toolkit vs Lightme

Beautiful light doesn’t happen by accident. Long Exposure Toolkit gives creative photographers the tools to plan the light, find the moon and stars, calculate long exposures, and get the shot right — from golden hour to deep into the night. PLAN THE LIGHT, NOT JUST THE SHOT Track every phase of natural light throughout the day, including civil and nautical dawn, blue hour, golden hour, solar noon, sunset and dusk. Follow the live sun-path arc, see exact times for every transition, and get a live countdown to your next photographic window. MOON, STARS, AND THE NIGHT SKY Point your iPhone at the sky and the Moon Finder guides you towards the moon using the live camera and a precision compass rose. Follow the moon’s path through the night, check moonrise and moonset for your location, and plan for upcoming lunar eclipses. For star-trail photography, choose any star or constellation from the built-in catalogue and view its declination arc — ideal for planning and compositing very long star-trail exposures. LONG EXPOSURES, MADE PRECISE Use the built-in light meter to measure the scene, select your ND filter strength, and quickly calculate the corrected shutter speed. When exposures run into minutes or hours, the built-in timer counts them for you and chimes when they’re complete. THE COMPLETE TOOLKIT • Golden Hour — a light planner for golden hour, blue hour, dawn, dusk, solar noon and live sun-path tracking • Moon Finder — locate the moon, follow its path, and check moonrise, moonset, eclipse and other information • Star Trails — view declination arcs for stars and constellations to help plan long star-trail exposures • Light Meter — live camera metering with ISO, aperture and shutter-speed readout • ND Calculator — calculate corrected exposure times for ND filters • Timelapse — calculate the interval and number of shots required for your chosen movie length • Stops — calculate the exposure difference between any two f-stops, shutter speeds or ISO values • EV Calculator — calculate exposure value from camera settings or measure the EV of the current scene • Timer — time long exposures with an audible alert when the exposure is complete • Torch — adjustable LED torch plus a screen light with a full colour picker for light painting; save your favourite colours for quick access • Inspiration — browse long-exposure photography from the Flickr community and see the camera settings used to create each image • Technique — more than 70 tips covering long-exposure technique, ND filters, subjects, camera settings, focusing and field craft Whether you’re photographing silky water, moving clouds, city lights, the moon, blue hour or star trails, Long Exposure Toolkit gives you the essential planning and exposure tools all in one place.

Lightme - Lightmeter is a clean, simple to use yet very powerful lightmeter. It is optimised for an easy one-handed use, both for left-handed and right-handed users, with the main controls within your thumb's reach, without the fatiguing juggling of your precious smartphone. A core distinguishing feature of Lightme - Lightmeter is that - differently from most of the other apps - it can show multiple combinations of valid settings for aperture and shutterspeed at the same time by working like a - stretched out - old needle and wheel lightmeter. This allows the user to quickly pick the desired settings without having to scroll on a tiny wheel picker. The app is designed to be welcoming to people who are just starting out, with a simple one-button use. But it offers many useful and advanced features for the more experienced shooters/users: Continuous metering (by pressing and holding or double tapping the measure button) Spot metering with a variable zoom (for more precision) which also supports average metering, and a very intuitive implementation of the zone system Automatic reciprocity failure compensation (for 25+ films, if you see exposure times in red, they are being compensated) A dedicated pinhole mode with precise exposure times for user defined apertures (multiple apertures at a time), with the possibility of setting a timer (through a shortcut) Incident light metering with calibration when using the front facing camera And more ... It also includes some other features that are enjoyable by any kind of user: Black and white preview The ability to use any of the cameras on your smartphone (swipe left/right on the preview) Multiple presets for your different camera/film/lens setups Framelines for previewing your shot, before setting up your tripod etc. A searchable list of useful tips to make better use of the application's potential A searchable list of more than 70 films to choose from with the possibility of selecting a few favourites Dark mode support and a useful level of customisation You can find even more info in the tips inside the app or you can have a look at full user manual by tapping on manual (in the settings) The app is free in all its many functionalities, but it offers In-App-Purchases in order to support the project. The only minor perk you can enable only via certain IAPs is the replacement of the Ad button with a label containing the name of your current preset, check under settings -> coffee for more info. Don't panic though, even if there's an Ad button it doesn't mean I'm going to show you ads. In fact unless you decide to tap on that button I'm never going to show you any. But if you have a few minutes to spare, watching a few of them sure helps keeping this project alive :) Try it, and, if you like it, share it with your friends and consider writing a (mini) review ;) Have a nice day, and good light!