Comparison

Ancient Light vs PocketMeter Pro

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

Head to head
About

Ancient Light

Features
Read full description

Ancient Light transforms your iPhone into a camera of the nineteenth century. Twelve authentic historic photographic processes - each faithfully simulated through the physics of tone, silver chemistry, grain, paper, emulsion, and light. Not filters. Processes. -- THE TWELVE PROCESSES -- Daguerreotype (1839) - The first successful photograph. A mirror-like silver surface with luminous shadow detail and seven scanned frame choices, plus No Frame. Tintype (1853) - The photograph of the working class. Robust, immediate, metallic, with regular or square format options and optional worn plate borders. Albumen (1850s) - Warm egg-white paper prints mounted as cabinet cards, with soft sepia-brown toning, aged cream stock, rounded corners, and a ruled inner border. Sepia - The warm brown tone of silver sulphide that preserved Victorian portraits through a century and a half. Cyanotype (1842) - Sir John Herschel's iron-based process. Deep Prussian blue. The print that gave photography the word "blueprint." Anthotype (1839) - Made from crushed plant pigments. Delicate, fugitive, botanical. The most poetic photographic process ever devised. Platinum (1873) - The process of fine art portraiture. Cool, shadow-rich, with a tonal range silver could never match. Autochrome (1907) - The Lumiere brothers' starch-grain colour process. Dreamy, pointillist, the first practical colour photography. Emulsion - A damaged instant-emulsion look with faded color, warm highlights, scorched edges, amber leaks, scratches, and oxidized surface wear. Bromoil (1907) - Oil-based ink on bleached gelatin. Painterly and stippled, with inky shadows and pale milky highlights. Lippmann (1891) - Gabriel Lippmann's Nobel Prize-winning interferential process. Warm amber ageing, long-exposure softness, and glass plate scratches from a century of handling. Infrared (1930s) - Light beyond the visible spectrum. Luminous white foliage, darkened skies, ethereal skin tones. The spectral world captured on heat-sensitive emulsion. -- WHAT ANCIENT LIGHT CAN DO -- * All four optical lenses - ultrawide (0.5x), wide (1x), 2x, and telephoto (5x) - selectable from the viewfinder * Shoot once, save many - save multiple historic versions from a single capture * On iPhone Pro: saves both a filtered JPEG and the original 48MP ProRAW DNG as a paired asset * Emulsion process with faded instant-film color, warmer highlights, lighter grain, and scanned edge damage * Albumen cabinet-card output with warm paper tone, aged stock texture, rounded card corners, and ruled border * Infrared process with glowing foliage, dark skies, and spectral black-and-white tonality * Tintype options - choose regular or square format, with period borders or no borders * Seven Daguerreotype frame styles plus No Frame, selectable directly from the viewfinder * Higher-resolution Daguerreotype frame output, scaled to the photo instead of the source frame artwork * Adjustments apply to the photograph while preserving Daguerreotype frame artwork * Full adjustment suite - exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, black point, saturation, vibrance, warmth, sharpness, and vignette * Auto enhancement with one tap * Precision crop tool with inset handles and rule-of-thirds grid * Landscape side-panel layout keeps the image large while all controls stay accessible * Photographer credit field - your name travels with every saved file in the IPTC metadata * Process, frame, and Tintype options stored between sessions * iPhone and iPad, all orientations * No subscription. No ads. No account required. Ancient Light is a single purchase. Everything in it is yours.

About

PocketMeter Pro

This professional light meter app transforms your iPhone into a versatile tool for film photographers and cinematographers. It offers live exposure readings, tap-to-spot metering, and cinema-specific features like shutter angle and false color overlays.

Highlights
  • Live scene metering
  • Tap-to-spot metering
  • Lockable exposure dials
  • Cinema mode with shutter angle
  • False color exposure map
  • LiDAR rangefinder (Pro models)
  • Save exposure logs with metadata
Features
Read full description

PocketMeter Pro turns your iPhone into a professional light meter. Built for film photographers and cinematographers who think in stops, angles, and zones. Point it at a scene and get a live exposure reading, solved across real photographic stop tables. Lock any two of shutter, aperture, and ISO, and the third tracks the light in real time. Tap anywhere in the frame to spot-meter: the tapped area is placed at middle gray, exactly like a spot reading for shadows or skin. • Live scene metering read directly from the camera sensor • Tap-to-spot metering with one-tap return to full-scene evaluation • Lockable dials with a priority-aware exposure solver • Pop-up scrub wheels with haptic detents — it feels like a meter, not a form • Hold any reading while you work, then release to go live again • Over- and under-exposure warnings when a solve runs out of range CINEMA MODE • Shutter angle instead of shutter speed — 180° at 24 fps reads 1/48 • Frame rates from 23.976 to 60 • ND filters in cinema density notation (ND 0.3 to ND 1.8), right on the control deck — photo mode shows classic filter factors (ND2 to ND64) instead • False color, one tap from the viewfinder: an ARRI-style exposure map where green is middle gray, pink is skin key, and red is clipping — read relative to YOUR dialed settings, not the phone's auto-exposure ON SET, IN THE FIELD • LiDAR rangefinder: distance to your metering point in feet and inches (iPhone Pro models) • Live color-temperature readout in Kelvin from scene white balance • LOG: save a frame to Photos stamped with your full exposure — EV, shutter or angle, aperture, ISO, ND, white balance, distance — and geotagged, so you can swipe up later and see exactly where you metered it • Full portrait and landscape support with translucent controls that keep the viewfinder clear BUILT BY FILMMAKERS PocketMeter Pro comes from Studio C-41 and was built and field-tested alongside working cinematographers. Requires iOS 17 or later. Rangefinder requires a LiDAR-equipped iPhone (Pro models). Camera, Photos, and location permissions are used only for metering, saving your logs, and tagging them — nothing is collected or shared.

Screenshots

Ancient Light4 screens
PocketMeter Pro3 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: Ancient Light at $0.99 against PocketMeter Pro's $9.99. PocketMeter Pro's advantage is chart position (#54 vs unranked). On ads, in-app purchases, device support and iOS requirement 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

Ancient Light costs $0.99 and PocketMeter Pro $9.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

Scorecard2 real differences · 9 level
Ancient Light versus PocketMeter Pro: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterAncient LightPocketMeter Pro
Price$0.99 — better$9.99
Rating—5.0 (5 ratings) — better
Positive reviews—100.0% of reviews
Number of ratings—5 — better
Update frequencyEvery 5 days—
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
Monetization—Paid
Best chart rank—#54 — better
DevicesiPhone, iPad — betteriPhone
Requires iOS16.0 — better17.0
Further details — not scored
Size6 MB1 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperGreg AndersonStudio C-41 Productions, LLC

In-app purchases

None

Ancient Light

No in-app purchases

None

PocketMeter Pro

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Ancient Light free?
Ancient Light costs $0.99, with no in-app purchases.
Is PocketMeter Pro free?
PocketMeter Pro costs $9.99, with no in-app purchases.
Do Ancient Light or PocketMeter Pro have ads?
Neither Ancient Light nor PocketMeter Pro shows ads.

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