Camera Tools

Camera Tools

On-set and pre-production utilities for Cinematographers and ACs

Overview

The Camera Tools suite provides offline utilities to help Cinematographers and Camera Assistants visualize and plan their shots. All tools run 100% in your browser — no data leaves your device.

Requirements

Functional Requirements

Non-Functional Requirements

Data Requirements

• Sensor database: Bundled presets (Full Frame, S35, S16, Micro 4/3) plus custom dimensions
• Lens data: User-input focal lengths, aperture, and image circle diameter
• No persistence: Tools are stateless — inputs are not saved between sessions (except presets)

Constraints & Limits

• All processing is client-side — no server dependency
• XML output conforms to ARRI frame line specification
• Lens coverage accuracy depends on manufacturer-published image circle data

Offline Behavior

• All camera tools are fully available offline with zero network dependency

Dependencies

• Requires: None — self-contained feature
• Required by: None

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Accessing Camera Tools

Navigate to Additional Tools in the sidebar to see all available camera tools. (Not the Tools section above it — that one holds Search, Device Library, Contacts, Calendar and Time Tracking.)

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Frame Line & Leader Composer

Generate custom ARRI XML frame lines and PNG Frame Leaders for on-set monitors and cinema cameras.

Creating a Frame Line

1. Navigate to Tools → Frame Line Composer
2. Select an aspect ratio from presets (1.78, 1.85, 2.39, etc.) or enter custom dimensions
3. Optionally pick a lens — when the catalogue records that lens's anamorphic squeeze, the Lens Squeeze field adopts it automatically (over 150 lenses currently carry one, including the complete Atlas Orion 2x, Atlas Mercury 1.5x and P+S Technik Evolution 2X series). The field remains editable, and selecting a lens with no recorded factor leaves your own value untouched. Before this, the squeeze stayed at 1.0 unless you set it by hand, so an anamorphic setup could export spherical frame lines that only looked wrong once they were on the monitor.
4. Configure options:

8. Preview updates in real-time as you adjust settings

Frame Leader

Generate a slate/leader graphic with production metadata:

• Director, DoP, Date, Camera info
• Resolution scales and reference markers
• Production-ready layout for monitor overlays

Exporting

Click Download XML or Download PNG to save the file.

Sharing a setup

Click Copy Setup URL to copy a shareable link to your clipboard. The link encodes your full configuration (camera, sensor mode, lens, squeeze, frame lines, leader metadata and options) in its ?setup= parameter, so opening it on another device or sending it to a colleague restores the exact setup. The current setup is also kept in the address bar automatically, so a refresh never loses your work.

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Depth of Field (DoF) Simulator

Visualize depth of field and calculate hyperfocal distances using an interactive simulator.

Using the Simulator

1. Navigate to Tools → DoF Simulator
2. Select your camera sensor (Full Frame, Super 35, Micro 4/3, etc.)
3. Set your lens focal length and aperture
4. Adjust focus distance — the simulator updates in real-time

Features

Reading Results

The simulator displays:

• Near focus limit: Closest point in acceptable focus
• Far focus limit: Farthest point in acceptable focus
• Total DoF: Distance between near and far limits
• Hyperfocal distance: Focus distance where everything from half that distance to infinity is in focus

When the Simulator Warns You

Two combinations produce numbers the optics cannot support, and the simulator says so rather than letting the readout stand:

• Diffraction limited — stopping down far enough that diffraction, not focus, sets the sharpness.
• Focus closer than the focal length — no real lens can focus nearer than its own focal length. It is easiest to reach with a teleconverter: a 300 mm lens behind a 2.0x extender is a 600 mm lens, so any focus distance under 0.6 m is impossible. Magnification, light loss and depth of field stop being meaningful there; increase the focus distance or remove the extender. The warning quotes the effective focal length so you can see which limit you crossed.

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Lens Coverage Calculator

Predict vignetting issues before you get to set by checking if a lens image circle covers your sensor.

Using the Calculator

1. Navigate to Tools → Lens Coverage
2. Select a sensor from the database or enter custom W × H dimensions
3. Input your lens image circle diameter (in mm)
4. The tool renders a visual overlay showing sensor area vs. image circle

Interpreting Results

• Green: Full coverage — no vignetting expected
• Yellow: Marginal — corners may show slight vignetting
• Red: Insufficient — visible vignetting on sensor edges

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Diopter Focus Calculator

Plan close-up work before you're on the dolly. When you mount a close-up diopter (a +dioptre attachment) on a cinema lens, it pulls the focus range nearer and adds magnification — but it also caps how far the lens can now focus. This calculator tells you the new closest and farthest focus distances and the resulting magnification for any lens + diopter combination, including stacks of up to four diopters.

Setting up the lens

1. Navigate to Tools → Diopter Calculator
2. Choose your lens one of two ways:
   • From your catalog — pick a cinema lens and its focal length, minimum focus distance (MFD), and mount are filled in automatically.
   • Manual — switch to manual mode and enter the focal length and MFD by hand.
3. Confirm the lens mount (it sets the flange focal distance used in the geometry — auto-set when you pick a catalog lens).
4. Check the lens length — rear mount flange to the front of the barrel. Picking a lens from the catalogue fills in its published body length, and most cinema lenses have one. When the catalogue has no figure the field is estimated from the focal length, flagged Est. with a warning: measure yours and type it in, because every suggested diopter position is derived from this number. Clearing the field returns it to the catalogue value, or to the estimate.

You can change the lens at any point — the geometry inputs (mount, lens length, focal length, catalog lens) are live. Every diopter still flagged Est. re-positions itself by the same amount the front of the barrel moved, and all three result cards recalculate. Distances you typed in yourself are treated as measured and are never moved; see Adding diopters below.

Adding diopters

Suggested distances are estimates to get you started — measure on the real rig for critical work.

A diopter carrying the Est. tag is one the app positioned, and it follows the lens geometry: change the lens length, focal length, mount or catalog lens and it moves with the front of the barrel. Type a distance into the field yourself and the tag drops — that diopter is now measured, and later geometry changes leave it alone. Suggest distances hands the whole stack back to the estimator.

Reading Results

Three cards summarize the configuration:

• New close focus: the closest subject the lens can now reach, measured from the sensor's focal-plane mark — the origin the lens barrel is engraved in and the one you pull a tape from. The working distance to the front of the diopter is given underneath. With no diopter, this shows the lens's native MFD.
• New far focus: the farthest the lens can focus once a diopter is mounted — a positive diopter turns the normally-infinite far limit into a finite distance. With no diopter, the lens still reaches infinity.
• Magnification: the reproduction ratio at the new closest focus (e.g. 1:4), with the lens-only ratio shown alongside for comparison.

A range strip visualizes the focus band, and an inline warning appears if a stack is too strong or positioned too far forward to focus at all. The strip and the cards share one origin — the sensor's focal-plane mark — so the two surfaces quote the same pair of numbers. The line under the strip restates them as a working distance to the front of the glass, and the caption names the offset: exactly how far the front-most diopter sits ahead of the sensor. The axis scales itself to the distances actually plotted, so a strong stack that focuses between 31 cm and 35 cm is drawn as a readable band rather than a sliver against a five-metre ruler.

Sharing & persistence

Your configuration is kept in the address bar automatically, so a refresh never loses your work. Click to copy the URL — it encodes the lens, mount, diopter stack, and units — and opening it on another device restores the exact setup. The link also records which distances were estimated and which you measured, so a shared setup keeps following the lens geometry on the other end. Links created before this was recorded open with every distance treated as measured — click Suggest distances to hand them back to the estimator.

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Lens Shimming Guide

Turn a focus-chart check into a shim recommendation. When a lens is sharpest at a mark that disagrees with the tape measure, the flange focal distance (FFD) of the camera/lens system is off — the Shimming Guide computes how far off, in microns, and which shims to add or remove.

Running the check

1. Navigate to Tools → Shimming Guide
2. Set up on the rig: lens wide open, longest focal length available (zooms: the long end), focus chart 10–30× the focal length away, distance measured from the sensor-plane mark ⌀.
3. Enter the focal length, the measured chart distance, and the distance the focus scale shows at sharpest focus. Tap ∞ if the image only peaks at the infinity stop.
4. Pick your lens mount to see the nominal flange focal distance next to your measured effective one.

Reading Results

• Flange error: the estimated FFD offset. Scale reads far → flange too long. Scale reads near (or focuses past infinity) → flange too short.
• Correction: remove shims to bring the optics closer to the sensor, add shims to move them away — with a concrete combination from standard kit thicknesses (0.01–0.20 mm).
• Effective flange distance: your measured FFD next to the mount's nominal value (e.g. PL 52.00 mm).
• Errors ≤ 0.01 mm are calibration-grade noise (no action); 0.01–0.02 mm sits inside normal cine-body tolerance — a banner tells you when shimming is optional.

The sketch below the cards shows the flange, the nominal sensor plane, and where your sensor effectively sits (exaggerated — not to scale). The math is a thin-lens estimate: shim, then re-run the same check — one or two iterations usually land inside tolerance. B4/ENG zooms adjust back focus with a dedicated ring instead of shims.

Sharing & persistence

The measurement lives in the page URL (mount, focal length, distances, units) and your last inputs survive a reload. Send the URL to the rental house to document what you measured.

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Film Length Calculator

Converts between a length of film stock, a running time and a frame count — in either direction — and tells you how many rolls to order.

Why the frame rate is not the whole answer

The calculation rests on one constant per format: how many frames sit on one foot of stock. That number is fixed by the gauge and the pull-down, so it is a property of the film, never of the camera or the frame rate:

totalFrames = feet × framesPerFoot
seconds     = totalFrames ÷ fps

The frame rate only enters at the second step. Shooting the same 400 ft of 35 mm 4-perf at 48 fps gives you exactly half the running time it does at 24 — but it is the same number of frames either way.

Formats

Nine, smallest gauge first:

Super 16 sits on the same 40 frames per foot as 16 mm, which looks like a duplicate row and is not: Super 16 is the same stock and the same pull-down, opened up to a wider frame. It gains image area, not running time.

These are the published figures, which the industry rounds — 35 mm 3-perf is charted as 21.33 though its pitch gives 21.44. The rounded numbers are the ones on the stock charts you will be ordering against, so they are the ones used here; a test holds each within 1% of its own frame pitch, which is loose enough for the rounding and tight enough to catch a transposed digit.

Using it

Pick the format and the frame rate — the ten common rates are offered, and any other value can be typed — then choose a direction:

• Length → running time. Enter feet or metres; get the runtime, the frame count and the length in the other unit.
• Running time → stock needed. Enter minutes and seconds; get the footage, the metreage and the frame count.

Rolls needed

Alongside the length, the tool lists how many rolls of each stocked size for that format would cover it — 400 ft and 1000 ft for 35 mm, 100/400/800 for 16 mm, and so on.

This always rounds up, and deliberately: a part-used roll is still a roll you had to load, and under-ordering stock is the expensive direction of the mistake.

Focus Pulling Simulator

⚠️ In development. The page carries an Alpha badge and there is nothing playable yet. It shows the planned training path so the feature can ship behind that label; treat it as a preview, not a tool you can prep with.

The intent is a gamified trainer for the 1st AC's craft — a virtual follow-focus wheel worked through cinematic scenes, holding the shot sharp as subjects move and the cut goes between them.

The training path it lays out runs from a still frame to the hardest moving shots: hold a static scene, rack between two faces, catch the turn, follow a walk to camera, then go pro.

Planned but not built: real optical bokeh rather than placeholder art, difficulty tiers that open the aperture and lengthen the lens as you improve, depth of field driven by the same optics engine as the DoF Simulator, and precision-and-timing scoring.

Camera Simulators Menu

A curated grid linking to official manufacturer interactive camera menus:

• ARRI: Practice navigating ALEXA camera menus
• Sony: Explore VENICE and FX-series interfaces
• RED: Navigate DSMC2/DSMC3 menu systems

All links open the official manufacturer web simulators in a new tab.

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Cinema Apps

A signpost, not a feature. Seven third-party iPhone/iPad apps worth having on a shoot, each linking straight to the App Store, grouped into four kinds of job:

These are other companies' apps. They are not part of Cine Power Planner, they are not covered by your subscription, and each is bought, updated and supported by its own vendor. The page says so before the list rather than after it, so nobody plans a prep day around something they turn out not to have.

Tips

1. Frame Line Composer: Save XML files to a USB stick for quick loading on set
2. DoF Simulator: Use presets to compare different camera/lens combinations side by side
3. Lens Coverage: Always check when using vintage lenses on modern sensors
4. Diopter Calculator: Copy the setup URL to send a planned close-up rig to your AC before the shoot
5. Shimming Guide: Check rented glass during prep — a 30-second chart test catches a worn mount before it costs you a shoot day
6. Simulate before set day: Practice in the Camera Simulators to avoid losing time on set

Related Documentation

• User Guide — Tools & Simulators
• Device Library

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Last Updated: 2026-09-10 Version: 0.790.2