ShutterDoc vs Glass Half Full

Measure what your film camera's shutter is actually doing. ShutterDoc measures shutter speeds in ordinary room light. Take the lens off, open the back, point the phone into the mount and fire. A run from 1/30 to 1/500 on an SLR, three firings a speed, takes about two minutes. A test roll costs you the film, the developing and a fortnight of waiting, and still leaves you guessing which speed was off. You can also detect shutter capping for speeds up to 1/1000th of a second. WHAT IT DOES Measures speeds from 1 second to 1/500, on focal-plane shutters, so most SLRs and rangefinders, and on leaf shutters, so folders, TLRs and fixed-lens compacts. Separate guidance for each. Detects shutter capping. It maps the exposure across the whole film gate and finds bands that received little or no light, on horizontal and vertical shutters alike. Puts a confidence on every reading, and says when conditions will not support a number you can trust. Keeps a library of your cameras, with shutter type, flash sync and notes, tested or not, and saves every session so a body can be compared over time. Exports readings and capping maps as CSV, for a repairer or a buyer. Walks you through the setup the first time you open it. WHAT IT IS FOR Buying: The seller says the speeds sound about right. Check before the money changes hands, at a flea market or across a cafe table. Shooting: An old leaf shutter can be well off its markings at the slow end. Measure it once and expose for the real number rather than the marking. Selling: Show a buyer the numbers rather than asking them to take your word for it, and put the export in the listing. A shelf of them: Work through the bodies you never tested and find out which are honest. Servicing: Test it, send it off, test it again, keep both sessions. CAPPING DETECTION At fast speeds a focal-plane shutter exposes the frame through a moving slit. If the curtains drift out of step the slit closes partway across and a band of every photograph receives nothing. Rest the camera on a tripod, fire about ten times one speed, and ShutterDoc averages them into one map of the light across the gate. It answers in one of four words, even, uneven, unsure or capping, and says unsure rather than picking the nearest when the evidence will not carry one. ACCURACY Verified against a phototransistor rig built for the purpose, on a Nikon FE, Minolta X-370, Canon EOS-1N, Kiev 19, Kodak Retina and Tele-Rolleiflex: horizontal and vertical focal-plane, and leaf. 1 second to 1/30: typically within 5% of true speed. Leaf shutters: typically within 0.15EV as far as 1/125. Focal plane at 1/125 and 1/250: usually within 0.3EV. 1/500: usually within 0.5EV, almost always within 0.6EV. Handheld is fine at 1/60 and below, which is what quick test mode is built for. Above that you want a constant, diffused light source, a monitor at full brightness or a wall with indirect sun on it, and a tripod if you have one. The app explains the setup and carries the full table. WHAT YOU NEED An iPhone that shoots 240fps slow motion. A camera whose lens comes off and whose back opens, with no film in it. Fixed-lens leaf-shutter cameras work too, at their widest aperture. A bright wall or a monitor at max brightness is enough light. HOW IT WORKS The phone films the shutter at 240 frames a second and adds up the light that reached the film gate, which is what your film would have received. Measuring light rather than timing an event is what resolves an exposure shorter than one frame. PRIVACY Your video is never uploaded. The measurement runs entirely on your phone. No account, no sign-in, no tracking. LIMITS ShutterDoc does not replace a workshop-grade tester, and small changes in lighting or filming angle can move a fast reading. Published accuracy results come from internal testing under controlled conditions, and your own may differ with your camera and your light. Get in touch if something is not working.

A powerful photo editor designed with film in mind. Edit your everyday photos and camera RAW files, try the colour of real film on them, and turn film negatives into finished pictures, with each frame found, cropped and straightened for you. Everything happens on your device, with no account and no subscription. EDIT YOUR PHOTOS Choose Edit photos to bring in JPEG, HEIC, TIFF or camera RAW files from Files or Photos, several at a time. RAW files are developed from their sensor data, with any lens corrections they carry. Start with Auto, then adjust exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, whites, blacks, clarity and dehaze. Set white balance, shape tone and colour with curves, fine-tune eight colour ranges with the colour mixer and grade shadows, mid-tones and highlights with colour wheels. Crop, straighten and correct perspective, reduce noise, sharpen, take out colour fringes and remove dust with the repair brush. TRY A FILM ON YOUR PHOTO Choose a film and see it on your own photo first. Natural films are modelled on real film stocks, with their grain and halation, and you can shoot them under or over and push or pull the development. Nostalgic films are softer and dreamier, for a light, airy feel. FIND YOUR LOOK Choose looks across colour, cinema and black and white, from natural palettes and cinema grades to selenium toning and lith prints. Browse them all on your photo and set each one's strength. BRING YOUR FILM TO LIFE Photograph your negatives with a camera and light source, import the scans and choose the film type. Glass Half Full finds the picture area, crops and straightens it, and converts colour or black-and-white negatives into positives. Convert one frame at a time or a whole roll at once. Choose a clean standard conversion, a lab scanner's look measured from real scans, or a print on photographic paper or cinema film. Slides have their own workflow too. WORK ON JUST ONE AREA Brighten a face, darken a distracting background or bring back a bright sky with masks. Draw linear and radial gradients, paint with a brush, or select by colour or brightness. Masks work on digital photos and converted film alike. FINISH IT LIKE A PRINT Add grain measured from real film scans, halation and a vignette. Put the photo on a strip of film with its edge lettering and frame numbers, or print it on paper, from cotton and baryta to newsprint, in soft window light. MORE TOOLS Lay photos and text across several slides for seamless carousel posts. Layer up to nine photos into a multiple exposure. Plan, time and log your film development, with times from the makers' data sheets. ONE PHOTO OR A WHOLE ROLL Edit single photos, keep film scans together in rolls and gather photos from anywhere in your library into folders. Mark picks and rejects, copy settings across a set and export in batches. Save your settings as recipes to reuse, or share them as files and recipe cards. KEEP YOUR ORIGINALS Edits are saved separately and never change your imported originals. Compare with the original at any time and undo any change. Export a JPEG to share or a 16-bit TIFF for further editing, then save it to Files or Photos, or share it. Back up your library as a ZIP archive and restore it whenever you need to. RAW support depends on your camera. On a Mac with Apple silicon, Glass Half Full runs as its iPad app, with mouse, trackpad and keyboard controls, zoom buttons and keyboard shortcuts. TRY IT WITH YOUR OWN PHOTOS Import and edit as much as you like for free, and export up to 12 photos at full quality with no watermark. Re-export those photos whenever you like, including in other formats. A one-time Full Unlock removes the export limit. One purchase covers iPhone, iPad and Mac with Apple silicon, with Family Sharing included. No subscription or expiry. I’m Sam, the developer behind Glass Half Full. If something gets in the way of your photographs, I’d like to hear about it. You can reach me through Help & about in the app.