PocketMeter Pro is a new light meter app with features for cinema and still film photographers.

PocketMeter Pro is a new light meter app with features for cinema and still film photographers.

If you’re in the market for an advanced light-metering app, this could be the one. Created by Bill Manning of Studio C-41 & Atlanta Film Co, PocketMeter Pro comes with several features film producers often seek — but other apps lack. Perhaps the most interesting is the false-colour display (third image).

False colour was the first feature I tried once I got my hands on a review copy of the app. It’s both trippy and very informative for shooting films with dynamic range¹, like slide films and specialty films and identifying lighting ratios².

This mode turns an image monochrome and colours in bright contrast various areas of exposure. Purple and blue signify crushed shadows, green is middle-grey³, and red is blown highlights. (Full explanation on the website: pocketmeterpro.com/learn#f…). If you’re in a studio, this guide can be used to add light to lift the shadows when needed or to soften the lights in the highlights. Outside, this can tell you what to expect from your film once it’s processed; for example, if you’re shooting slide film, which is notoriously bad at handling overexposure, you’d want little or no red on the display. For most colour-negative film, it would be best to minimize purple and blue.

This is much more deliberate than “metering for highlights” or “metering for shadows,” which are common techniques film photographers use.

Currently, the range of exposures rendered by the false colour mode is tied to your image sensor’s dynamic range.

The app also allows calibration with an EV offset slider. This can help fine-tune your readings if your phone disagrees with a meter you know is right.

For cinema, PocketMeter Pro can switch its UI to use shutter angle instead of shutter speed (with fps calculations) and iris instead of aperture.

Several more features, such as ND filter compensation, white balance estimation, a lidar rangefinder (couldn’t test that on my old device), and screen recording with location stamps.

That’s quite a lot for me, to be honest — I typically rely on the Sunny 16 Rule⁴ or the built-in camera meter — but for slow and deliberate measurements, e.g., when shooting large format film or very expensive and finicky stuff like Aerochrome⁵, this app could be very useful — particularly its ability to fine-tune the measurements and view the hot zones with the false-colour display.

PocketMeter Pro is currently available for iPhones running iOS 17 or later (I tested on a 2022 iPhone SE with iOS 26) with an Android version under development. The app costs $9.99.

¹ — Learn more about dynamic range here: analog.cafe/r/dynamic-rang….

² — Learn more about lighting ratios here: analog.cafe/r/lighting-rat….

³ — Learn about 18% middle-grey here: analog.cafe/r/how-to-make-….

⁴ — Learn about the Sunny 16 Rule here: analog.cafe/r/master-the-s….

⁵ — Learn about Aerochrome (and how much it costs) here: analog.cafe/r/kodak-aeroch….

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