Exposure calculator in Excel or Palm

I have searched extensively for a comprehensive exposure calculation

program for the Palm Pilot. I want it to handle multiple filter

factors, bellows extension, and reciprocity failure for my choice of

film and lens. The only program I've seen referenced (in old

articles) has faded off the Web.

 

So this evening I wrote a working tool in Excel to check out the

idea. Does anyone know of such a program? If not, would people find

it useful? I might write one for the Palm OS for myself and share it

if there is no better solution out there. Drop a note to

duncan.dwelle@onlinepayroll.com if you want to see my current Excel

calculator.

The BTZS ExpoDev program from Fred Newman's View Camera Store looks like it's just what you're looking for. It's for the Palm Pilot.

Thanks, Daniel. I've alrady looked at ExpoDev at www.btzs.org, sold by www.viewcamerastore.com for $129.95. It is designed for B&W Zone work; does not seem to employ a library of filers and factors; its DOF features are much less elegant than pCAM (www.davideubank.com) which is $15. So I'm still looking.

I've tried Photographe 2.01 (by LHphoto? I think). <br>

It allows you to enter multiple cameras, lenses, films, filters (with daylight/tungsten/flash factors...), reciprocity failure curves, bellows extension, short description and long note etc. <br>

BUT it doesn't work on PalmOS5 anymore...

I used the BTZS program for quite a while until about four years ago. Perhaps it's changed since then but I don't recall it being limited to black and white zone system work. My recollection is that it could be used with color or black and white and could be used with either a reflected or an incident light meter.

 

I don't know how "elegant" other depth of field calculators are and I didn't use that feature a whole lot but when I did it worked very well and was very easy to use. It would either tell you the setting to use if you knew the depth of field you wanted or you could specify your settings and it would tell you what the depth of field would be at those settings. I also don't know about the price of other calculators such as the one you mention but of course the BTZS program does much more than calculate depth of field. It calculates exposure with your specified aperture or your specified shutter speed, with and without a flare factor, with and without reciprocity based on your particular film, with and without filters, with and without bellows extension, functions as a timer, stores all of your shooting data for later download, allows you to determine precise development times if you do your own processing, plus a variety of other things I don't now recall.

 

Since that program does everything you say you want (exposure calculation with multiple filter factors, bellows extension, and reciprocity with your choice of film and lens) I don't understand what your problem is with it (apart from its lack of "elegance" in calculating depth of field and perhaps the price), unless of course it has been changed and is now in fact limited to black and white zone system work as you say, which seems unlikely but I guess anything is possible.

Have you tried Bob Wheeler's program;"VadeMecum"? It has very extensive calculations, maybe this is more than what you want?

 

If you haven't checked it out here is the link to his web site.

http://www.bobwheeler.com/photo/

Have Fun

Dan

That should have Said;

http://www.bobwheeler.com/photo/

 

 

 

Have Fun, Dan

That's it, rely on a damn computer to figure out how to shoot your large format negs. What a waste of effort.

Just wait til the battery dies & then you can't remember how to think for yourself.

 

This stuff isn't difficult. Why are you trying to make it so?

Duncan -

 

If you have Excel and the Palm Desktop on the same computer you should see two choices when you select 'File - New' in Excel. One is PalmAp. Choose that one and you will generate a palm app which you can download to you palm.

 

Good luck,

Richard

Hi Duncan,

 

I've written a program for PalmOS, which assists you in creating images with the zone system. If you like take a quick look at http://www.zonev-pda.com and get the demo there. I myself was also disappointed about the lack of a suitable program for the zone system on PalmOS devices and so I've written this one. Started with

development back in 2002, I've released the application in late december last year.

 

Best regards

Rüdiger Schneider, developer of Zone [V]