Alert! Fantastic Photographic Calculator Tool

Desktop Version of f/Calc

I don’t know about you, but I love “free”, especially when it’s a top-notch piece of software like ƒ/Calc.  Here’s how the tool’s creator, Warren Young, describes ƒ/Calc:

“ƒ/Calc is a calculator for photographic formulas. These formulas are at the heart of many interesting questions about photography. None of these formulas are difficult to compute with a scientific calculator, but doing it by hand is slow, tedious and error-prone. The faster you can get an answer, the faster you can get back to shooting. Or, you can take the same time to learn the answer to more questions! When you let ƒ/Calc do the hard work, you gain an intuitive feel for what the results mean, because you can quickly try new input values to see how they affect the result.

“ƒ/Calc is available in several versions, one of which runs right inside your browser. It has all of the core functionality of the desktop version, and there is no charge for using it. You may find that it does everything you need.

“There is also a “local” version of ƒ/Calc which works just like the online version, but it is more powerful.

“ƒ/Calc Local lets you work with it while you aren’t connected to the Internet. If you’re already carrying a laptop with you on your photography expeditions, why not take ƒ/Calc along?”

Warren states that the desktop version is free while in beta, but will only be a modest shareware amount of around $10 later.  That’s still not bad, if you consider the usefulness of this tool.

I’ve just started to delve into all that this tool has to offer, and I am impressed.  Take some time yourself and check out either the online or desktop versions.

There’s also an online and pdf printable version of the user manual available.  The user manual contains a nice collection of photographic definitions and formulas.

Online Version of f/Calc

Update on Saturday, November 20, 2010 at 1:31PM by Daniel Fealko

Warren Young wrote to expand on what I posted.  He states:

“FYI, the bit about beta pricing on the web page was old.  (I’ve removed it.)  f/Calc 2.0 has been out of beta for quite a while now.  You’ll find that your copy will start demanding a registration key about a month after you first ran it.

“The online version remains free.  You just lose out on some features and don’t get the convenience of offline operation.”