Vintage Light Meter

A precision light meter in your pocket. Point, read, shoot. Built for film photographers — and anyone who thinks in stops.

Vintage Light Meter turns your iPhone into a precision light meter — the kind photographers carried alongside their film cameras for decades.

Point your camera at the scene. Watch the needle move. Read your exposure.

HOW IT WORKS

The app reads live light data from your iPhone's camera each frame, calculates scene brightness in EV₁₀₀ using correct APEX photographic math, and gives you a recommended aperture or shutter speed — just like a real handheld meter would.

Two metering modes: • Shutter Priority (Tv) — Set your ISO and shutter speed. Get the aperture. • Aperture Priority (Av) — Set your ISO and aperture. Get the shutter speed.

Smoothed live readings prevent flicker, and the analog needle moves continuously across the full aperture scale — it doesn't snap between stops, it glides.

BUILT FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS

• Full, half, and third-stop increments for ISO, shutter speed, and aperture • ISO 25–6400 · Shutter 30" to 1/8000 · Aperture f/0.95 to f/64 • Lock mode: freeze the EV reading to meter manually or work off a reading taken in shade
• Clean OVER / UNDER warnings when the scene is outside your chosen settings

THE DETAILS MATTER

Shutter speeds display in photographic convention (1/125) but calculate with exact power-of-two values (1/128) — so the math is always right, even when the label rounds.
Changing stop increments remaps your current selection in log space so you never lose your place.

THE AESTHETIC

Warm dark leather tones, brass accents, monospaced type, and a red swinging needle. Vintage Light Meter is designed to feel like the tool it emulates — tactile, focused, and built for one thing.

No ads. No subscriptions. No internet required.