Zone Light Meter

Zone Light Meter is a precise, beginner-friendly light meter for analogue film photographers. Built around the Zone System, it turns your phone into a serious metering tool for 35mm, medium format, large format, and motion picture work.

WHAT IT DOES
• Reflected, incident, spot, and multi-spot metering
• Pinch-to-zoom spot meter, with auto-zone placement
• Visual zone scale and zone calculator
• False-color zone overlay and live histogram
• Film latitude warnings with shadow and highlight pinning

ANALOGUE-SPECIFIC CORRECTIONS
• Reciprocity failure compensation per film stock
• Filter factor and ND filter compensation
• Bellows extension correction for large format
• Expired film compensation
• Infrared and pinhole modes
• Bracketing with custom step counts

FILM STOCK DATABASE
88 stocks across 18 brands: Kodak, Ilford, Fuji, Cinestill, Adox, Bergger, Foma, Lomography, Rollei, Shanghai, Svema, and more. Each stock has push and pull profiles where the data exists.

CINE / MOTION PICTURE MODE
• Frame rates and shutter angles
• T-stop reading from f-stop
• Cine-specific film stocks
• Footage tracking and pulldown helpers

HARDWARE PROFILES
Build custom gear profiles for your camera bodies, lenses, and flash. Aperture and shutter ranges, max sync speed, fixed-lens bodies, hyperfocal distance. Profiles snap your meter readings to combinations your camera can actually expose.

THE DIGITAL-TO-ANALOGUE BRIDGE
• Shot logging with EXIF-style metadata
• Roll tracking across multiple cameras and films
• CSV export for development notebooks
• Development time database
• Attach scan files to the original shot
• Cost tracking per frame

CALIBRATION
• Per-device calibration workflow
• Community calibration profiles
• Drift detection and re-calibration prompts

FRICTIONLESS UI
Dark mode and red mode for darkroom and night work. High-contrast tactile dials. Volume buttons trigger readings. Voice readout for hands-free metering. Home-screen widgets. Idle-pause so the camera doesn't drain your battery between shots.

CELESTIAL & ENVIRONMENTAL
• Compass, sun-position, and golden-hour ephemeris
• Magnetic declination
• Tide tables for coastal shooting

DARKROOM MODULE
Enlarger exposure calculator with reciprocity. Test-strip planner. Filter-grade adjustments for variable-contrast paper.

OFFLINE-FIRST
Everything works without a network connection. Your rolls, gear, calibration data, and settings stay on your phone. No accounts. No tracking. No ads.

DOCUMENTED
Every modal and every option has its own help page at zonelightmeter.com/docs. Search the docs, read at your own pace. A beginner glossary explains every term.

OPEN AND PRIVATE
Local-first by design. The website you read this on has no analytics. The app does not collect personal data. Read the privacy policy in the app or at zonelightmeter.com/privacy.

WHO IT'S FOR
Film photographers, students, large-format shooters, motion-picture camera operators, darkroom printers, alternative-process printers, and anyone who wants to learn the Zone System on a phone they already own. Beginner-friendly for newcomers. Deep enough for working professionals.

Zone Light Meter is built and maintained by a single developer. Feedback, bug reports, and feature requests are read at hello@zonelightmeter.com.