Greetings, and a question

Yoda

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Hi Everyone!

I'm really glad to be here! It seems like this is a great community, and I'm excited to get involved!

I have a little bit of a conundrum. It's a little bit tricky to explain. I'm a software engineer and also very passionate about photography, and my wife is a professional photographer. I've been working on a software tool for photographers (both amateur and pro) that was mostly for fun, and also to be something useful to help people out. I sincerely want to share this tool with other photographers as I've worked very hard on it and I think it is useful and educational. However, I'm not sure if it violates the Terms & Conditions of this forum to share a link to a beta version of an application I've been working on, since even though this is a "pet project" of mine, one of it's purposes is to draw traffic to my wife's professional website and to help promote her business.

So, I'm looking for feedback on whether it would be ok for me to share a link to this beta version of my app, or if this would violate the T&C for these forums.

In either case, I'm looking forward to sharing other thoughts and ideas and getting to know all of you better!

Cheers,
Y
 
It will look as if you are just doing exactly what you are doing, trying to get clicks on your wife's site.

If she is a pro, getting her clicks doesn't mean anything because we wouldn't be her market.
OTOH, I'd like to know about the software so why not descrie it here?
 
The software is a user friendly exposure calculator. It’s purpose is to help with shooting in manual mode if you either don’t want to use your light meter, don’t trust your meter, don’t know how to use your meter, or don’t have a good light meter. I personally have seen way too many improperly exposed photos because someone was using the “matrix” metering mode on their camera, or just didn’t know how to meter in tricky lighting situations.


You tell the software what the situation is for your photograph and it suggests a shutter speed, aperture, and ISO (or nags you to use a tripod).


It has different controls for various things that indicate the amount of light on your subject, such as the time of day, weather, amount of shade, etc. It can give exposure settings for very low light situations with very long exposures. You can specify aperture priority or shutter priority if you have a particular F-Stop or shutter speed that you want to use. You can give the specifications of your lens, and it gives recommendations that are custom to your lens. It has a “tripod” mode where it gives settings that you otherwise couldn’t handhold, otherwise it tries to optimize your shutter speed given your focal length so that you avoid camera blur. And more.


Here are some more details. Originally, before I wrote this software and when my wife and I were brainstorming about it, we were basically intending this to be part of her marketing strategy - something to help improve her organic google search results. Our theory was that google might bump up the relevancy of her website if there was an application there that was actually useful to people and was being used.


This strategy never changed.


However, once I started coding this thing I got really excited about it. I originally had thought that it would just be a “toy” application, not something that really was useful. But, now that it has evolved I actually think it might be useful or at least educational to a wide audience. I might be wrong. I’m open to feedback on how I could make this more useful.


So, I’m interested in sharing this thing with the general online community of photographers.


I built this thing myself putting in some long coding hours, and am really hoping that people might find it useful or at least entertaining and educational.

Also, I can very easily add more features if anyone had ideas for other things that might be useful. I'm a very fast coder and it only took me about a week to code this thing (working very long days), so I can add more features very quickly.


Cheers,
Y
 
The software is a user friendly exposure calculator. It’s purpose is to help with shooting in manual mode if you either don’t want to use your light meter, don’t trust your meter, don’t know how to use your meter, or don’t have a good light meter. I personally have seen way too many improperly exposed photos because someone was using the “matrix” metering mode on their camera, or just didn’t know how to meter in tricky lighting situations.

Greetings, ok Devil's Advocate here, if I don't know enough not to use matrix metering or meter properly in a given situation, how on earth would I possibly have enough knowledge to figure out what to input into an exposure calculator, properly judge for shadow or overcast conditions, etc? Also, if I wanted a computer to figure all of this out for me, why not just throw the camera selector switch to an Automatic or scene mode and let the one inside the camera do all the work?

Don't get me wrong, I wish you well in your endeavors and I hope your app is a big success, etc, etc - It just really doesn't sound like something I would personally be interested in or use.
 
Last edited:
Yoda,

Not trying to rain on your parade but three issues occurred to me:

1) The people who might need this help would, more than likely, not shoot in manual mode.
2) Using this app puts yet another time burden into the 'taking pictures' schema.
3) People who expose poorly with relatively intelligent cameras guiding them, wouldn't have the knowledge to judge parameters to input them.

Lew
 
Yoda,

Not trying to rain on your parade but three issues occurred to me:

1) The people who might need this help would, more than likely, not shoot in manual mode.
2) Using this app puts yet another time burden into the 'taking pictures' schema.
3) People who expose poorly with relatively intelligent cameras guiding them, wouldn't have the knowledge to judge parameters to input them.

Lew


This. Also, there are phone apps that out there for light metering and such. Here is an example that I use.
 
Welcome to the site.
 
Welcome, Yoda. What OS?

My first thoughts regarding your app is that for most of what it is doing, I and many others wouldn't need it. Then there are those variables that can't be foreseen, such as shade and shadow, EC, flash, etc.
 
Thanks for the feedback everyone.

I realize that this app might not be useful for everybody, depending on your personal preferences and techniques for how you determine exposure and how you meter (and how good you are at metering). However, I expect that it will be very useful for some people, and might even radically change the way that you go about determining exposure for your shots and improve the quality of your images.

Using the meter in your camera can be very tricky. Even if you are using the spot meter, unless you take into consideration things like the color of the surface you are metering off of, the angle of light on that surface, etc, and adjust your EV level accordingly.

The basic features of this app allow you to specify the weather, time of day, the amount of shade, and a few other things. It’s based off the sunny 16 rule - so you will notice that it defaults to high noon with bright sunlight and the sunny 16 exposure. With default settings in the app I try to find a balance between a high depth of field and a fast shutter. With a little practice I’ve found that it becomes very intuitive to adjust the sliders and other settings to exactly match what my brain is observing regarding weather, time of day, and shade level.

> if I don't know enough not to use matrix metering or meter properly in a given situation how on earth would I possibly have enough knowledge to figure out what to input into an exposure calculator…?

I think it is possible that someone who knows nothing about photography could quickly become very skilled and accurate at dialing settings into this app, since the basic settings in the app are simple things that don’t involve any technical terminology, etc, but just require basic skills of observation (is it sunny or stormy out, etc). Take a look at the app and you will see.

Here’s a link to this now infamous app:

Perfect Exposure Tool

Try it out. It also works fine on iPhones, iPads, and other mobile devices - so you can use it in the field as long as you’ve got a cell signal.

I personally use a handheld meter in cases where I want to be especially precise about my exposure. However, this isn’t always practical or possible if your subject is far away. And, for a beginner photographer the prospect of buying and using a handheld light meter is probably a bit daunting.

Some of the time when I’m shooting, if I’m in a “familiar” light situation I can basically guess what exposure I need based on past experience, and using a similar system in my head to what my app is doing internally. I usually use the spot meter in my camera to double check that I have a good exposure. However, I don’t always need to as I've become pretty good over time at calculating exposures in my head based on the light situation.

This app is basically an attempt to reproduce the process that I use in my head to determine exposure, if I am not using my meter.

Since the principle for this app is to determine exposure based on the illuminance of light that’s hitting your subject, as opposed to the light that is bouncing off of your subject (which is what a spot meter would measure), in general you should get a better exposure than if you were to meter off some arbitrary thing in your scene (or get aggregate metering using matrix metering mode), unless you were very good at manually compensating for the color, “shininess”, etc, of the surface you were metering off of, or using the zone system (or other more advanced approach).

For example, see Zone System - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Note that this is just an early beta version of this app - I still need to spend more time testing it and fine tuning some of the internal parameters, to get the EV levels more accurate in certain situations. However, even right now it seems to work very well for most conditions (assuming I didn’t break anything) ;)

If you folks still think this thing is not very useful I will probably put this project on the back burner for the time being (or forever). Don’t worry, my feelings won’t be hurt and I’ve only put a week of work into this so far, so please be totally honest with me. I’d rather not waste any more time on this if it isn’t going to be useful for anyone, and switch back to working on one of my main projects.

Thanks!
 
Thanks for the feedback everyone.

I realize that this app might not be useful for everybody, depending on your personal preferences and techniques for how you determine exposure and how you meter (and how good you are at metering). However, I expect that it will be very useful for some people, and might even radically change the way that you go about determining exposure for your shots and improve the quality of your images.

Using the meter in your camera can be very tricky. Even if you are using the spot meter, unless you take into consideration things like the color of the surface you are metering off of, the angle of light on that surface, etc, and adjust your EV level accordingly.

The basic features of this app allow you to specify the weather, time of day, the amount of shade, and a few other things. It’s based off the sunny 16 rule - so you will notice that it defaults to high noon with bright sunlight and the sunny 16 exposure. With default settings in the app I try to find a balance between a high depth of field and a fast shutter. With a little practice I’ve found that it becomes very intuitive to adjust the sliders and other settings to exactly match what my brain is observing regarding weather, time of day, and shade level.

> if I don't know enough not to use matrix metering or meter properly in a given situation how on earth would I possibly have enough knowledge to figure out what to input into an exposure calculator…?

I think it is possible that someone who knows nothing about photography could quickly become very skilled and accurate at dialing settings into this app, since the basic settings in the app are simple things that don’t involve any technical terminology, etc, but just require basic skills of observation (is it sunny or stormy out, etc). Take a look at the app and you will see.

Here’s a link to this now infamous app:

Perfect Exposure Tool

Try it out. It also works fine on iPhones, iPads, and other mobile devices - so you can use it in the field as long as you’ve got a cell signal.

I personally use a handheld meter in cases where I want to be especially precise about my exposure. However, this isn’t always practical or possible if your subject is far away. And, for a beginner photographer the prospect of buying and using a handheld light meter is probably a bit daunting.

Some of the time when I’m shooting, if I’m in a “familiar” light situation I can basically guess what exposure I need based on past experience, and using a similar system in my head to what my app is doing internally. I usually use the spot meter in my camera to double check that I have a good exposure. However, I don’t always need to as I've become pretty good over time at calculating exposures in my head based on the light situation.

This app is basically an attempt to reproduce the process that I use in my head to determine exposure, if I am not using my meter.

Since the principle for this app is to determine exposure based on the illuminance of light that’s hitting your subject, as opposed to the light that is bouncing off of your subject (which is what a spot meter would measure), in general you should get a better exposure than if you were to meter off some arbitrary thing in your scene (or get aggregate metering using matrix metering mode), unless you were very good at manually compensating for the color, “shininess”, etc, of the surface you were metering off of, or using the zone system (or other more advanced approach).

For example, see Zone System - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Note that this is just an early beta version of this app - I still need to spend more time testing it and fine tuning some of the internal parameters, to get the EV levels more accurate in certain situations. However, even right now it seems to work very well for most conditions (assuming I didn’t break anything) ;)

If you folks still think this thing is not very useful I will probably put this project on the back burner for the time being (or forever). Don’t worry, my feelings won’t be hurt and I’ve only put a week of work into this so far, so please be totally honest with me. I’d rather not waste any more time on this if it isn’t going to be useful for anyone, and switch back to working on one of my main projects.

Thanks!

Umm. .thanks, but no. I don't generally use apps that have to phone home when there really isn't a very good reason for them to phone home. Call me paranoid.. well, because i'm paranoid, but I don't just go around willy nilly loading apps onto my phone that "dial" out and send goodness nows what kind of information along to some unknown server somewhere run by unknown parties. Nothing personal mind you, but I'm pretty strict about controllling what info my phone does and doesn't send and to whom.

I appreciate the fact that you took the time to write this app - even though honestly I just can't see it being all that tremendously useful. Missing exposure has never really been that much of an issue for me, what I end up missing are good shots when I'm messing around too much with stuff like this instead of minding my viewfinder and waiting for the right opportunity.

I guess my thought process is, and hey I could be wrong here, but my thought process is that if someone actually knows enough about the sunny 16 rule, etc, etc - they can spend the time to punch all this data into an app, ad infinitum, and then they will get I guess get a proper setting back for what they are looking for assuming they guess right on variables like "amount of shade", etc.

Or they can do what I do, heft the camera, take a test shot or two, do a quick once over to see if the exposure is workable, dial it in if necessary and start hammering away when the action starts. If your a little off, fix it in post. At most I have to hit 3-4 buttons and I don't have to guess at squat. See, I'm not only paranoid, I'm horribly lazy.

But hey, maybe some folks out there might really have a need for something like this - I mean granted I'm not seeing it but maybe someone else will. As for me, I'll take a pass but wish you well.
 
Don't worry, the app only sends a very small amount of data to the server when you press the "calculate" button (just the parameters from the form). Also, there is nothing that is actually installed on your phone - the "app" is just a simple web page.

So, it is far less intrusive than actually installing an app from the app store onto your phone.

From a privacy/paranoia point of view, using this app is not fundamentally different than clicking on a google link or ad to go to some photographer's website. So, if you browse the web on your phone, there is no reason to be paranoid about my website.

> I just can't see it being all that tremendously useful. Missing exposure has never really been that much of an issue for me...

I happen to be in the same camp. I probably will never use this app when I'm out shooting, as I don't have any problems quickly dialing in good exposure settings on the camera. I didn't write this app for myself ;)

Originally I was thinking that it might only be useful for beginner photographers who were having trouble consistently getting good exposures, and were still learning about light.
 
Welcome to the site. Seems your question has been answered. :p
 
LOL! Yeah, probably so! Who knows though, maybe someone will find this dang thing useful ;)

In any case, it was a fun little project to work on. I learned a few things while building it too. So I have no regrets. If nobody ever seems to want to use it then I'll just bring down the server eventually.
 
I tried it just now...I took a couple shots out the window...it's awfully hot unless the maximum on "sunny" means at ground level, in the shade of buildings... $DSC_4052_SUNNY.jpg THis is sunny, and it's WINTER-time, low sun,and it's way hot... but in an area lighted by mostly SKY-lighting, the calculator seems okay...

$DSC_4053.JPG
 
I'm not sure that the first shot you took is too hot. The yellow on the walls of that building looks bright because it is a bright color and a somewhat reflective surface, but it isn't blown out and the color is preserved. The grey roof tile, as well as the reddish colored shingles above the window look natural to me and are not so hot. They are not the main subject of this "composition" (I know this is just a test shot so it's an arbitrary composition) so it's easy to not pay attention to how the exposure looks on these surfaces.

The area that is actually blown out are the white window shade in the bottom left window.

If your subject was a person standing in front of this wall, I believe their face, hair, clothing, etc would have been properly exposed.

This exposure calculator gives an exposure based on the ambient light that exists in different situations. It does *not* take into consideration how reflective one surface is over another. So, surfaces that have a "normal" reflectivity should be properly exposed. Very shiny or brightly colored surfaces will be overexposed, and darker surfaces will be underexposed.

In other words, the EV level on the walls of that building is way above "normal" compared to other things that are in the image, and most likely also compared to what you would want for the subject of a photo that had these walls in the background.

It addresses the problem where your light meter might be confused by very bright, reflective things in the background (like the wall and windows in your photo), try to get those things into proper exposure, and then your subject (the person standing in front of the wall, who does not have uber-reflective skin) is underexposed.

I pretty much guarantee you that if you took a portrait of a person standing in front of that wall and just used the "auto" or "matrix" metering mode on your camera, the person would be underexposed, and the wall would look much less "hot". But, this would not be a good exposure as you really want your subject to be properly exposed.

So, will will throw out the argument that the first image is properly exposed.

> in an area lighted by mostly SKY-lighting, the calculator seems okay...

This isn't exactly sky-lighting - it's direct sunlight on the grass and concrete walk. It's not fundamentally any different than the lighting on the walls of that building, just more "normal" non-reflective surfaces.

One other example of how this works that's similar to the issue going on with the walls of that building in the first shot:

If you are shooting a person, tree, flower, insect, gnome, etc standing in a snowy field (or ski slope) in the middle of the day with bright sunlight, the EV level on the snow is much, much higher than the EV level on your subject. So, do you want to "properly" expose the snow, or your subject? You can't properly expose both. Generally speaking, the best looking images with snow in the background in bright direct sunlight are the ones where the snow is extremely hot, and possibly even blown out in areas. If you expose things so that the snow is "properly" exposed and not hot, then your poor subject will be in the dark.

The degrees of latitude for EV levels in digital sensors and even for B&W film is way lower than the degrees of latitude for the human eye. So, in any shot where you have a wide range of EV levels you often have to make a tough decision as to what you want properly exposed. Unless you are shooting HDR of course.

This app works on the principle that *most often* your subject won't be unusually bright or unusually dark compared to other things in your composition, and that the ambient EV level probably will work the best.

I could very easily add a feature where this is a slider for how "reflective" or "brightly colored" your subject is, and compensate to darken the exposure based on this. I'm not sure if in practice this would be a common situation though?
 

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