Cine Meter for iOS

“…it’s much more than an ordinary iPhone app. This is a seriously useful cinematographer’s tool.”
— Jon Fauer, ASC, in Film and Digital Times

“Whether you're a cinematographer or a still photographer, if you care about accurate and consistent exposure, and control your lighting yourself, then Adam Wilt's Cine Meter for iOS is a must-have App for you to check-out.”
— Michael Reichmann, The Luminous Landscape

“@adamwilt is a wicked genius. Cine Meter is probably the best iOS app for filmmakers this year!”
— Kenneth M. Little, on Twitter

“I've got a waveform in my pocket, and I'm not afraid to use it! This app is brilliant!!”
— Angus Oborn, on Twitter

Looking for Cine Meter II? Here it is.

Compare Cine Meter vs. Cine Meter II

Cine Meter uses the back camera on your iPhone^®, iPad^®, or iPod touch^® to provide a shutter-priority reflected light meter, an RGB waveform monitor, and a false-color picture mode. Cine Meter works on any camera-equipped iDevice running iOS 5.1 or higher.

Cine Meter viewing a DSC Labs ChromaDuMonde^® 12 chart, showing an RGB waveform.

See the light: Cine Meter not only gives you exposure information, it shows you at a glance how evenly your greenscreen is lit, and where high-contrast hotspots and shadows may give you trouble. With Cine Meter, you can walk around, light your set, and solve problems long before your real camera is set up, making pictures, and running down its batteries.

The light meter shows you the stop to set as decimal readings (such as f/5.0, good for cameras with EVF iris readouts) or full stops and fractions (like f/4.0 ⅔, good for cine lenses with marked iris rings). You can calibrate Cine Meter to match other meters to a tenth of a stop, and take readings using matrix or spot metering.
The waveform monitor shows you how light levels vary within and across a scene. It shows you how even the lighting is on a greenscreen or white cove, and lets you see hotspots and imbalances at a glance. The waveform’s RGB mode shows you color imbalances in the image and gives you a handy way to check for color purity on a greenscreen or bluescreen.
The false-color picture lets you define allowable contrast ranges, and see instantly which shadows are underexposed and what highlights risk clipping:

Cine Meter viewing a DSC Labs ChromaDuMonde^® 12 chart in false-color mode.

Cine Meter runs entirely on your iDevice: it doesn’t use WiFi or mobile data. No ads, no in-app purchases, no tracking. If you have power in the battery and light in front of the lens, it will work.

Cine Meter is a free download on the App Store.

(If you’re on an iPad running iOS 6 or newer, select the “iPhone Apps” tab in the App Store. Otherwise, Cine Meter won’t show up.)

iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. App Store is a service mark of Apple Inc.

ChromaDuMonde^® charts seen in Cine Meter screenshots used with kind permission of DSC Labs. DSC Labs is not responsible for any images viewed with Cine Meter, or how they appear in Cine Meter's pictures.