Six weeks after you finish a roll, the scans arrive and you can't remember which Portra was which. Filmnotes keeps the notes while you shoot — a phone photo, the settings, the lens — so every scan already knows where it came from.
One-time purchase. iCloud sync. No subscription, no account, no analytics.
Weeks pass between shooting a roll and getting the scans. By the time the frame is in front of you, the things that made it good (or bad) are already gone.
"Which Portra was that one?"
You shot two rolls last month, one pushed and one box-speed. Now there's a beautiful green frame and you have no idea which one it came from.
"Was that the Canonet or the Pentax?"
You carried both on the trip. Half the scans look like the Canonet's character, half don't. Which is which?
"Where was I when I shot that?"
A garden in Lisbon? Somewhere in Madrid? It was a year ago. The light was good. That's all you remember.
"Is there a roll still in the Olympus?"
You loaded one in April. Then life happened. Now it's May and you're about to load another. Wait — is it loaded already?
The signature trick: snap a quick phone photo of every scene you shoot. When the scans come back, Filmnotes lines them up next to your phone reference so you know exactly which frame is which — and what lens, stock and settings made it.
Taken with your phone, the moment you took the shot.
Logged in one tap when you advance the frame.
You open the roll and it's already labelled. No guesswork.
The reference photo is optional. The settings stay attached either way. Most shooters tap the camera button once per frame and never think about it again.
Open the app and the first thing you see is how many rolls are loaded right now, and which camera each one is in. The pulsing dot means "alive — go shoot."
A frame is whatever you want it to be — three numbers and a photo, or every detail down to the filter and the city. One tap covers the basics. Tap once more for the rest.
One quick sheet. Standard stops on a dial, or type your own.
Pick from your gear list. Zooms welcome — "24-70mm" works.
ND, polariser, whatever you put in front of the glass. Plus stops of compensation.
Set at the roll. Filmnotes shows the effective ISO so you don't lose track.
GPS and the city name fill in by themselves. Skip if you'd rather not.
Snap a quick visual. About 800px, JPEG, doesn't fill your library.
A flag on the frame. Don't lose the second exposure to your memory.
Group frames in the same bracket. Compare the three.
What it was, why you took it. A few words you'll thank yourself for.
You picked up a film camera because it's fun. Filmnotes keeps the notes so you don't have to think about them.
Tap Load. Choose a body, choose a stock from ~75 preloaded, and you're loading.
Shutter and aperture on a quick sheet. The date, the time and where you are fill in by themselves.
One tap on the camera button. A small JPEG, attached to the frame. Skip it if you don't care.
The roll moves to Finished. What happens next is the lab's job. Filmnotes is done.
Around 75 stocks preloaded across Kodak, Fujifilm, Ilford, Cinestill, Foma, Rollei, Adox, Bergger, Kentmere and Lomography — 35mm and 120, colour, B&W and slide. Add your own anytime.
And more. Plus reciprocity coefficients for the B&W stocks, straight from the manufacturer data sheets.
Filmnotes adds up the frames you log into a small dashboard. Time filters for 30 days, year, or all-time — plus a per-camera and per-lens breakdown if you want to dig in.
A small set of helpers that don't get in the way. Use them when you need them, ignore them when you don't.
Bright sun, hazy, overcast, open shade — pick the light, get the exposure.
Format-aware. 35mm, APS-C, 6×6 and 6×7 circles of confusion baked in.
Per-stock coefficients from the manufacturer data sheets. Real numbers, not a guess.
A rough rear-camera reflective meter for spot checks. Trust your TTL for critical work.
Filmnotes runs on your phone. iCloud sync, if you turn it on, runs through your private container. Nothing on our servers, because there are none.
A few things shooters usually ask.
Filmnotes is an iOS app for analog film photographers that records the camera, lens, aperture, shutter, filter, location and an optional phone reference photo for every frame you shoot. When your scans come back from the lab weeks later, every frame is already labelled with what made it. Filmnotes is made by Quietflash, runs offline by default, and offers optional iCloud sync.
Anyone who shoots film and wants to remember what they shot without keeping a spreadsheet. It's especially useful for shooters who carry more than one body, push or pull stocks, or work across 35mm and medium format. The casual user can log a frame in one tap; the serious shooter has fields for multi-exposure, bracket grouping, push/pull, filter compensation and per-stock reciprocity.
Two things stand out. First, the optional phone reference photo per frame gives you a visual bookmark so you can match each scan to the exact shot when it returns. Second, the home screen leads with "what's loaded in which camera" rather than recent rolls — the first thing you see is whether your Olympus has an unfinished roll in it. Filmnotes also deliberately skips features that happen outside the camera, like lab directories and development timers.
Filmnotes runs on iPhone and iPad with iOS 17 or later. Optional iCloud sync keeps your data in sync between your own devices through your private CloudKit container. An Apple Watch companion is planned for a follow-up release.
Per frame: aperture, shutter, lens, filter and filter compensation, subject, notes, GPS and city, an optional phone reference photo, plus flags for multiple exposures and bracket groups. Per roll: stock, camera, frame count, push/pull (with effective ISO), and a readable label that writes itself.
A small JPEG (~800px) attached to the frame. Take one when you shoot, see it next to the scan when it returns. It's optional and quick — most users tap it once and forget about it. Stored on your device, never uploaded.
On your iPhone or iPad. If you turn on iCloud sync, it goes through your own iCloud container — never through us. We don't run servers.
Around 75 across Kodak, Fujifilm, Ilford, Cinestill, Foma, Rollei, Adox, Bergger, Kentmere and Lomography — in 35mm and 120, colour, B&W and slide. B&W stocks include reciprocity coefficients from the manufacturer data sheets, used by the reciprocity calculator. You can add your own anytime.
No. Filmnotes is for the part of film photography that happens between loading and finishing a roll. What happens at the lab is out of the app's hands — and most shooters use a lab they trust, so a directory adds friction more than it removes.
Yes. Everything works offline. iCloud sync is the only network-aware thing in the app, and it's optional.
No. You only need that if you're building the app from source. For App Store users, just download and use it.
No. One-time purchase. No subscriptions, no in-app upsells, no ads.
Not in v1. It's planned for a follow-up release.
Filmnotes is in App Review. Drop a note if you'd like to know when it ships.