Film and PDAs

April 5, 2006

I recently bought a PDA(Palm Tungsten E2 to be exact) and was wondering if anyone knew where i could find .pdf or .exe files as quick reference guides to put on it. For instance, sample lighting/sound/set diagrams. glossary of terms, photos, etc. I've heard alot of people use either PDAs or laptops for work they do on shoots and is what i got it for. Now I'm just looking for fall-back guides and photos to use as lighting references to put on it. Any help would be great. Thanks.

Bob Hayes · April 7, 2006

I'd love the same information however I have an HP Ipaq which is PC based.

Mitch Gross · April 7, 2006

Over at cinematography.net there are downloads available for a few PDA programs. I got SunPath (timetables for the sun based on location and date), pCam and pCine, which are excellent lens and camera data programs. Useful stuff.

Andy Sparaco SOC · April 7, 2006

I have used the demo versions of the film calculator and the camera report from http://www.zebrafilm.com/

The developer is a dutch based DP so the software is dead on.

I liked them a lot but then decided that the PDA approach was not for me

K Borowski · April 7, 2006

An interesting concept in theory, but then again the fact that they got "Imperial" units wrong really scares me. You come up with a high tech program to do a very very low-tech job but then forget the simple converion factor of 2.54 cm to an inch? Since the United States is the predominant consumer of MP film (I am assuming here. I am sure it is at least consumes more than any other single nation each year), wouldn't they make certain that the measurements provided by this system were correct as their first priority? I am making another assumption that this sort of program is more common in Europe than in the states, as we tend to be less techno savvy than our European counterparts. In any case, if you use it, make sure you test it extensively before actually relying in it, and always have a backup, as with all things digital. What if your PDF suddenly dies after compiling a day's worth of reports? I used to type notes for high school on a palm pilot before it crashed on me, erasing an entire day's worth; I went back to paper. I personally think that this "digital everything" phenomenon is scary. My one friend got a palm pilot that had some sort of primitive navigation guidance program, and then insisted on finding me directions with it instead of using an Atlas or printing off directions on mapquest really quick. The program didn't have names of streets and gave cardinal directions instead of "turn left" or "turn right", so needless to say we got totally utterly lost and burned about 2 gallons of gas needlessly.

My two cents.

Regards.

~Karl Borowski