The Second View App is a Light Meter and Distance Scale with Parallax Correction and More
Second View is a newly-developed app that turns an iPhone into an all-in-one assistant device for analog photographers. Not only does it include mainstay functions like a light meter and exposure timers, but it also includes a LiDAR distance scale, parallax correction, and film stock reciprocity correction.
Developed by photographer Benoit Linard, PetaPixel was first informed of Second View through Exposing Engineering, as it was a perfect pairing with the company’s new VZ-6617 medium format panoramic camera, which doesn’t have its own viewfinder, rangefinder, or light meter.
“The app started as a side tool for my 3D-printed camera project,” Linard tells PetaPixel. “I needed to simulate shift movements from my phone before hauling out all the gear. But over time, I kept switching between a viewfinder app, a light meter, a timer, a bubble level, and at some point, it just made sense to put everything in one place. A lot of the features came directly from beta testers, who have been a huge part of shaping where the app is now. If anyone runs into bugs or has ideas, I really want to hear from them. The goal is to keep building on this for a long time.”
The top-level pitch for Second View is that it turns the iPhone into a precision field toolkit for analog photographers by including a light meter, LiDAR-based distance calculator (on iPhone 12 models and later), parallax correction, rise/shift simulation, and reciprocity failure curves for 60 film stocks.
Second View says it has accurate reciprocity failure curves for those film stocks. When an exposure exceeds one second, the app is able to calculate the corrected time automatically, and that supports a host of popular film formats, including Kodak Portra, Ektar, CineStill, Ilford HP5, Tri-X, T-Max, Fujifilm Velvia, Provia, and more.
Photographers can set their lens and film format, and the app crops the ultra-wide camera to show exactly the frame of view the camera will capture: the same field of view, the same aspect ratio, and the same framing. Second View supports 35mm, medium format (6×4.5 to 6×17 panoramic), large format (4×5, 5×8), and even fully custom sizes.
The app works even better with the built-in parallax correction, which allows photographers to align the wide-angle lens of the iPhone with the exact perspective of the lens, which is hugely important for framing with cameras like the VZ-6617 or CCB 617C. Second View also supports movement simulation of a view camera or technical camera, allowing photographers to offset the crop up, down, left, or right in one millimeter steps.
The app also includes a fully customizable grid with up to 12×12 divisions, as well as classic mainstays like the rule of thirds, a phi grid, or the golden triangle.
Settings can be saved into camera kits, allowing photographers to swap back and forth among them quickly without losing settings. Kits store information on lenses, film format, preferred film stocks, enabled features, and parallax offsets.
Finally, photographers can take reference photos in the app, allowing them to look back at a full set of metadata, including focal length, film format, film stock, shutter speed, aperture, ISO, rise/shift offset, GPS coordinates, and timestamp. In short, it’s all of the film tracking apps that have become popular lately, combined with one of the most functional and feature-rich exposure assistant and viewfinder apps available.
Second View requires iOS 16 or later and is priced in two tiers: a full-featured Pro version costs $14.99 per year, while a pared-down Basic version costs $7.99 per year.
Image credits: Jaron Schneider for PetaPixel
