Why I Deleted the Crown + Flint App

I wanted Crown + Flint to work. Film cameras don’t record what you did, so an app that does the remembering for you seems sensible. I paid for Pro Mode. Then I deleted the app.

Crown + Flint is a light meter and record keeper for film photographers. You enter your cameras, lenses and filters, and your film. When you shoot, the app meters the scene through the smartphone (iPhone and Android) camera, recommends an exposure that suits the film and kit, and saves the settings along with a location, a timestamp and, if you want one, a reference image. It also has a workflow to transition each roll from purchase, to loading, to unloading to development. It does not have one for the scanning stage.

The free version covers five rolls. Pro Mode, an in-app purchase listed on the App Store at $19.99, removes the limit. You can export your data as PDF, CSV or ExifTool files.

To log a frame after I set aperture and exposure and take the photograph, I stop, open the app, record the camera settings, perhaps take a reference image, and go back to the camera setting to do it again for the next frame, and the one after that, until all 36 are gone. Suppose the crash were fixed tomorrow. I would still have this vexing photography workflow.

I went through workarounds in my head. Dictating notes still means stopping. Logging settings only when the light changes defeats the point of per-frame data. Entering everything after the roll is finished asks me to remember 36 sets of settings, which I won’t. The limitation is inherently the use of a 1980s era film camera itself: it stores nothing, so the record has to be made at the moment of exposure, by hand, on a device that isn’t the camera.

The feature I could not get to work was “Match viewfinder to lens”, which makes the on-screen viewfinder simulate what your lens will actually frame. It lives under Preferences, then Viewfinder. Every time I switched it on, the app crashed.

I was on app version 8.3.0, iOS 27.0 and an iPhone 17 Pro. I had never used the toggle before, so I can’t say whether iOS 27 broke it or whether it was always broken.

Reporting it was harder than it should have been. The menu has an Email Support entry but tapping it did nothing. The app saves debug information, but I found no instructions for getting it out and sending it. In the end I posted a bug-report on the developer’s Discord server. I don’t know whether anyone has read the post.

I think the app suits a narrow kind of shooting: one camera, one lens, few exposure and aperture changes, a subject that stays mostly put, unchanging light, and time to stop between frames. For example, a portrait or landscape shoot. Travel, street and wildlife photography don’t, because those depend on reacting quickly, and every pause to record camera settings could mean a missed shot.

None of this makes it a bad app for everyone, and the App Store reviews give the app praise. Using these types of apps just ask for something I don’t want to do while I’m shooting.

If your film work is slow and deliberate, it may suit you. Mine usually isn’t.