We ultimately entered the era in which mobile phones come close to being capable of even making your breakfast. Hence we’d like to take the time to present to you five apps we believe will relieve a Visual Effect artist’s equipment case from a few pounds.

LIGHTMETER (click here)
As crazy as it sounds this app will turn your iPhone ≥ 3GS into a lightmeter. Using the built-in camera Lightmeter calculates the incoming amount of light and deliver the exposure for that scene.

SONAR RULER (click here)
This app makes use of the same principle as submarines use for navigation. Sonar Ruler sends out short click-sounds and measures the amount of time it takes the sound waves to come back in order to determine the distance between two objects. Works best for next gen iPhones like the 3G and 3GS. So shush now – we are measuring the props on our set!

A-LEVEL (click here)
The iPhone has a three-axis accelerometer built-in. A-Level makes use of that to work as a spirit level. Watch the bubble!

DSLR SLATE (click here)
A Slate is a slate is a slate. Well with this slate adds functionality by easing the change of captions and providing a running timecode or a color chart.

AJA DATACALC (click here)
With this app you can calculate how much free data storage you are going to need to record a certain amount of footage. Provide compression, frame size/rate and audio data and AJA Datacalc will give you an approximation of required space in bytes.

Jake & Dan