New Large Format Android App Launched!

[tiggert]

First I wanted to say THANKS to everyone from the forum who helped Beta testing the app as well as the feedback and suggestions!


Welcome to Film Crop Assistant for Android!

Link to the App on the Play Store (http://bit.ly/12Bd0yt)

http://www.tleephotography.com/OPF/RedBox.jpg

This application will assist you when determining where to locate your Large Format camera in the field! Using the camera on your Android smart phone, simply select your film format and your lens selection, and you can maneuver with ease to best select your setup location. The application will:

-keep a list of your favorite formats and lenses
-compute your approximate crop and overlay it on a live image
-includes a handy bellows factor calculator for field use.

The app is free, it does include an advertisement space, I don't expect to get rich off the app! I released this to the Large Format community as a "THANKS" to everyone who has shared and assisted my learning over the past <to many to list> years!

Use it and enjoy!

Feel free to let me know if your device has any issues or you encounter a problem with the app.

Thanks Everyone.

[jars121]

Great effort with this Terry! I've loaded up all my film and lens sizes and will be playing with this ad nauseam I'm sure!

[bob carnie]

Very nice

[Tin Can]

Will there be iOS APP?

[Leigh]

Very interesting.

- Leigh

[Walter Calahan]

Just downloaded to my Samsung Galaxy S3. Will check it out. Thanks.

[tiggert]

Thanks everyone!

Feel free to drop me a note if you have any issues with the app...

Ultimately I hope it is of use, we can always use a decent tool while in the field.

I don't have an iOS environment, but am trying to convince a friend of mine who does to port it over. If he does will for sure keep you guys posted!

[Tin Can]

It's a great product, I run around with a P&S and an iPod, but this solves several problems, in one device. It's hard to come up with unique app's!

Congratulations!



Thanks everyone!

Feel free to drop me a note if you have any issues with the app...

Ultimately I hope it is of use, we can always use a decent tool while in the field.

I don't have an iOS environment, but am trying to convince a friend of mine who does to port it over. If he does will for sure keep you guys posted!

[tiggert]

Thanks Randy!

Indeed, it is hard to come up with app ideas!

Hope it works for you, keep me posted!

[David Luttmann]

Neat idea. The aspect ratio seems wrong though. Seems like a 3:2 ratio instead of 4:5

[brucep]

It looks very good, I hope to try it this weekend. Many thanks for your hard work.

Bruce

[andreios]

Now that is another reason to get an android smartphone. My old BBerry is getting really weak..

[cosmicexplosion]

what about all us poor iphoney users?:(

[tenderobject]

Is this a FREE app? I can't see it on the link it might be that Iran is restricted in GooglePlay. :(

[tiggert]

Couple of quick responses:

-It is a free app, I pushed it out to the Google Play world, not sure if Iran is on the restricted list or not? It also may not be published world wide yet it could take 24 hours or more for updates to flow out. That said I am testing the Ad Module out, not planning to get rich but more for an ongoing usage tracking. Curious to see how the tool will be used over time....plus it has been a good excuse to play with some of these features!

-no short term plans on iOS version, but I do have a pal looking at it. I can't stand Apple's choice of Objective-C (I can barely tolerate Java, am a hard core C/C++ guy) and cant justify the expense....unless I make enough off the ad on this one....HA!

-The aspect ratio issue. Here is the fun part of digital! I like to tell folks large format ground glass is the original WYSIWYG environment! Not so with cell phone cameras. First the camera has its own true resolution. I use that information plus the camera lens info to compute the bounding box based on your film/lens choices. But then the camera has multiple preview modes available, none are guaranteed to match the camera OR the screen ARs! On my Nexus S two preview modes are 720x480 or 640x480...so you can see two very different preview aspect ratios are possible. I decided to choose the preview AR that closest matches the screen AR, even tho that may not match the camera (and by extension the bounding box)AR. There may well be some degree of picture (and bounding box) squishing (highly technical term!) going on....you wont normally notice it with a phone camera app as they normally have a very wide angle lens, but try it on a square and you'll notice it...


Bottom line the bounding box is a good approximate, if you compare it to your ground glass it should be "close" to the actual image, as the image on the phone is probably slightly squished too....

Thanks!

[Peter De Smidt]

Great idea!

[bobwysiwyg]

Doesn't appear to be compatible with my Samsung Stratosphere. :(

[jonreid]

what about all us poor iphoney users?:(

There is an app for iOS called Viewfinder that has similar functionality.

Jon

[Eric Biggerstaff]

Nice! I think the aspect ratio for 4x5 is not correct. I set up for 5x7 and that also seems a little off. I loaded it on my Samsung Galaxy S3 as well as my Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 and it loaded fine with no issues.

[Jody_S]

Still not compatible with 2.3.3? I assume the problem is with the ads, not the app itself? I've gotten around this before with apps such as Scrabble, by downloading the executable file and installing directly (bypassing Play or whatever the h- it's called this month). Some ads push parts of the app off-screen, but I can work around that.

Ps: I still have my K&R book, 1st edition, '78.

[tiggert]

Hi Eric, see my explanation regarding aspect ratio's above. Check the preview, the images itself may well be "squished". Try pointing the camera at a perfect square, I can almost guarantee in camera preview mode it won't be!

Bob- I'll check into that device, not sure what version OS you may have on it? I also have a friend with an issue loading on Nexus 7.

Jody, that may be the issue, I thought took it all out and l still had a crash on the emulators on 2.3.3 so there is another method call I think. I'll see if I can look into it this weekend. Love my K&R book ;-)

[tenderobject]

Iran is restricted in gplay. Is it possible to get this directly somewhere than gplay? This would be probably the app im looking for when shooting pinhole cameras.

[mcfactor]

It is a great idea! I have a galaxy s3 as well, but the problem it isnt that the image is squished, the actual ratio itself is wrong. one side is nearly double the other, the ratio itself is wrong.

[Tin Can]

I looked for an iOS app and found nothing I wanted. There are a few, but all bad. The $30 one is for movie film shooters and I don't want to spend $30 on an app that is useless for LF and all it's variation.

[tiggert]

Hi Randy, sorry about that. I'll post on here if we actually do the port to iOS.

mcfactor, if you don't mind can you take a screenshot of your S3 with the camera view on the screen? To do a screen shot on Android you simply hold the Volume Down button at the same time as the power button. You should hear a "Shutter click" within a second or so and the screen will be saved to your gallery. If you can email (or PM me here) me the screen shot and the film size/lens size you were using that would be great I can look into it. If you have some graph paper with perfect squares and point the camera at them with the app in camera mode, you should be able to see that the squares are no longer square on the screen (but if you use the camera and snap a photo they will be in the photo). But it is possible the S3 aspect ratio's between camera/preview/screen work out perfectly, but I doubt it (most cameras are squareish 4:3 or so, while most device screens are 16:9 ish so there is always image "squishing/stretching" going on...the fun part is it is always device dependent...blah! Makes me love my ground glass that much more!

[jwaddison]

Would this work on an android tablet?

[tiggert]

@jwaddison if your tablet has a camera it should work! I have an Asus transformer that works fine

[mcfactor]

9904999050

the one on the left is "4x5" the one on the right is "60x60"

[gliderbee]

I have the same experience on my S3: 6x6 is clearly not square. There's another app ("viewfinder", it's on my phone, but I can't find it anymore on Google play) that does it correctly, so I can compare easily. That one allows to view multiple frames, have anything outside the chosen frame opaque and save the chosen image, even with location info.

Stefan

[tiggert]

Hey S3 guys thanks for that! I'll do some more investigation and see if I can find the issue.

[tiggert]

Good news you 2.3.3 guys, I found the bug that was keeping me from running on 2.3.3 devices.

Still working on the S3 issue, should have a new release in a couple of days if I can get a new version out!

Thanks,
Terry

[tenderobject]

Can anyone share me the apk file if possible so i can test it on my device? Thanks

[tiggert]

Hi all,

A couple of quick updates. Still have an issue on 2.2.3 so I wont be releasing anything for that version...sorry! Too much effort to track down the bug...

regarding the square not being square on the S3 and some other devices. There are two issues on Android for this app:

1) Android does not guarantee that the Horizontal and Vertical view angles reported back by the camera are accurate. These are values plugged into the platform by the manufacturer in order to pass Android certification testing....isnt based on reality. They should be close, but may not be spot on or in some cases may not even be close!!! I have no other source that I can find to do my computations from, short of examining and hand coding each device, so the results may not be perfect...it is what it is

2) The camera is 4:3 aspect ratio (well, most are), camera previews are not, neither are screens (most previews 640 or 720x480...screens are all over the map but doubtful they are 4:3). As the OS reports view angles based on camera image sensor (supposedly, see 1 above) I must compute based on 4:3 AR, then perform AR modifications to wind up with a screen interpolation. The camera->preview is device specific, it can be squishing the image or it could be cutting pixels off, I cant tell. There is no OS indication of HOW it is being done, but I can guarantee your image on your screen is not exactly what your sensor on the camera is seeing (AR wise or pixels wise) and will result in my box being distorted by some degree.

Bottom line: the box I draw will be CLOSE to covering the image you see on your ground glass. depending on the device it may be dead on, or could be a long ways off. Because the app depends on a manufacturer setting that can be off there is no way to guarantee a perfect box! But the app works close enough for my needs, so I'm good...hopefully it is close enough for you guys to get some use out of it.

Thanks!