Kinemetron vs MergeHDR
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Kinemetron
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Is your 1/30 really 1/30? Kinemetron tests the shutter speeds of film cameras with nothing but your iPhone, and adds a light meter for when you go out shooting. TEST YOUR SHUTTER Fire the shutter next to your iPhone. Kinemetron hears the opening and closing of the shutter and shows the measured time next to the dial setting, with the error in stops. Microphone mode covers slow speeds from 1 second to 1/15 s. HANDS-FREE SERIES Pick a speed and keep firing. Each release is detected on its own, three shots per speed, then Kinemetron moves to the next speed. Finish a sweep and get a health report for the whole camera. FASTER SPEEDS WITH THE IPHONE CAMERA Open the camera back, point the iPhone camera through the shutter at a bright light and measure the light pulse. Camera mode is an experimental estimate for faster speeds. LIGHT METER Reflected light metering with the iPhone camera. Set your film ISO and get aperture and shutter pairs, ready to dial into a camera with no working meter. YOUR CAMERA COLLECTION Keep every SLR, rangefinder, TLR and medium format body in one place, with deviation charts by speed, measurement history and before-and-after service comparison. Camera profiles and history sync between your devices with iCloud. KINEMETRON PRO Three camera profiles are free. One lifetime purchase adds unlimited cameras, PDF health reports, before/after CLA comparison, CSV export and alternate app icons. Measurement accuracy is never locked behind Pro. HONEST LIMITS Kinemetron is a screening tool, not calibrated service equipment. The microphone cannot resolve fast shutters, and camera mode cannot measure curtain travel or exposure evenness. Verify important results with a specialist shutter tester. PRIVATE BY DESIGN All audio and camera frames are analyzed on your device. No account, no tracking, nothing sent to us. Optional iCloud sync stays in your own iCloud account.
MergeHDR
Automatically finds and merges exposure-bracketed photos from your library. Offers manual control over alignment, deghosting, and tone-mapping for professional HDR results. All processing happens on your device for privacy and offline use.
- Automatic exposure bracket detection
- Manual alignment and deghosting
- Adjustable tone-mapping styles
- Per-exposure layer control
- On-device processing
- Export to HEIC
- Universal Purchase
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Your camera already shot the brackets. MergeHDR finds them. Point a camera at a sunset and a single exposure cannot hold it — either the sky burns out or the foreground falls to black. That is what auto exposure bracketing is for. The catch is what happens next: those 3, 5 or 7 frames sit in your library unmerged, because hunting them down and combining them by hand is a chore. MergeHDR does the hunting. It watches your photo library for exposure-bracket sets — frames shot seconds apart at stepped EVs — and flags every one it finds, reading the EXIF your camera already wrote. No manual sorting. No missed brackets. REVIEW BEFORE YOU COMMIT Every merge is yours to shape: • Alignment corrects the small shifts between handheld frames — no tripod required • Four deghosting levels handle moving subjects, rippling water and windblown leaves • Tone-mapping styles set the look, and you can switch after the merge without reprocessing the set • Per-exposure layers with opacity control, so you can see exactly what each frame contributed SEE THE MATH The merge report shows the exposure ladder, how many stops of headroom you recovered and how much of the frame was blown out before the merge — alongside the camera, lens, ISO and focal length read straight from the file. EXPORT Save the full-quality HDR result, or compress it straight to HEIC on the way out using the same on-device pipeline as our other app, RAWtoHEIC — far smaller files, same detail. Results land back in your library beside the originals, with capture date and location carried over. YOUR ORIGINALS STAY YOURS Nothing is deleted behind your back. If you choose to clear out the source brackets after a merge, they move to Recently Deleted with the usual 30-day safety net. EVERYTHING RUNS ON YOUR DEVICE No cloud. No account. No uploads. Detection, alignment, deghosting and tone-mapping all run locally on your iPhone, iPad or Mac. It works on a plane with no signal, and there is no server to breach because there is no server involved. The App Store privacy label reads what it should: Data Not Collected. WORKS WITH Bracket sets from any camera that writes standard EXIF exposure values — Canon, Sony, Nikon and Fujifilm RAW, plus iPhone ProRAW and JPEG. ONE PURCHASE, EVERY DEVICE MergeHDR is a Universal Purchase. Buy once and it unlocks on iPhone, iPad and Mac, with Family Sharing. FREE TO TRY Merge and preview as much as you like. Saving is free for your first 10 exports, up to 5 a day. After that, MergeHDR Pro unlocks unlimited saves. MERGEHDR PRO • Lifetime — $19.99, one-time purchase • Yearly — $9.99 per year, auto-renewing Payment is charged to your Apple Account at confirmation of purchase. A yearly subscription renews automatically unless it is cancelled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period; your account is charged for renewal within 24 hours of the end of that period. Manage or cancel a subscription in your Apple Account settings after purchase. The lifetime option does not renew. Terms of Use: https://mergehdr.app/terms Privacy Policy: https://mergehdr.app/privacy
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: MergeHDR at every 5 days against Kinemetron's every 2 months. On price, ads, in-app purchases and device support 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. Kinemetron sells 1 one-off in-app purchase and MergeHDR sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $9.99 per year. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
Kinemetron ships an update every 2 months, MergeHDR every 5 days. The most recent releases landed on October 25, 2026 and October 26, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Kinemetron | MergeHDR |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | — | 1.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Number of ratings | — | 1 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months | Every 5 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | — | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, Mac — better |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 — better | 18.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 19 MB | 9 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | +4 |
| Developer | Jan Sokol | Sandro Gumz |
In-app purchases
Kinemetron
- Kinemetron Pro$7.99
MergeHDR
- MergeHDR Pro (Yearly)$9.991 Year
- MergeHDR Pro (Lifetime)$19.99









