Help & FAQ

A project is usually one production, like a competition series or a live event. Inside each project you can have multiple setups — individual plots for different moments of the shoot (intros, eliminations, finale, and so on).

Think of a project as a folder and setups as the pages inside it. Switch between setups using the tabs at the bottom of the screen.

Open your Account panel (top right), scroll to My Projects, and tap + New Project. You'll get a fresh canvas with one empty setup ready to plot.

Everything saves to the cloud automatically as you work — no Save button needed. You'll see a green dot in the top bar when you're connected and synced.

If you lose internet, CamPlot keeps working and syncs the next time you're online. Daily rolling backups keep 10 days of history so you can recover any version.

Tap the camera icon in the left toolbar, then tap anywhere on the canvas to drop one. Each new camera auto-labels with the next available letter (A, B, C…) and pulls operator/lens info from your Camera Roster if you've set one up.

Tap the subject icon in the left toolbar (the pink circle), then tap on the canvas to place one. Subjects show up as pink markers and are useful for marking where your talent, set pieces, or performance zones sit.

Select the camera, then grab the small blue handle that appears above it and drag to rotate. A readout shows the current angle while you drag.

On desktop, you can also hold Cmd and drag the camera body. Or use the rotation slider in the right-side properties panel for precise angles.

Every camera has a field of view cone that shows exactly what the lens covers. Select a camera to see its properties panel on the right:

• Set the focal length (in mm) to match your real lens. CamPlot calculates the cone angle automatically.
• Toggle between Full Frame and Super 35 sensor sizes and pick your aspect ratio — both are remembered between sessions.
• Drag the end of the FOV cone (up to 200') to see coverage at distance. With a scale reference set, the readout shows real distance and live frame width at that distance.
• Match Lens (on by default) snaps the cone to the zoom range of the lens you've typed — enter "35-80mm" and the FOV can't wander outside what that lens can actually do.

Yes, two locks in the camera panel (or the right-click menu). Both are the little horseshoe magnet button — tap it, then tap the subject:

• Subject lock (magnet next to Shot Type) — the camera keeps facing a chosen subject as either one moves. Subjects have the same thing as Look Direction, and lights have it next to their Details field.
• FOV distance lock — the cone tip tracks the subject's near edge, so your frame-size readout always reflects the actual camera-to-subject distance. Coverage numbers update live while you drag.

Turn on Jib Mode in the camera panel to give a camera a jib arm. Drag the square base disc to position it; the camera is then constrained to the arm's reach (standard jib = fixed radius, techno = telescoping min–max ring). An optional arc shows the sweep.

Jibs work with movement paths too — the camera's path stays on the arm, and the base itself can have its own path (right-click the base → Add Base Position).

Each camera's details box (operator / camera / lens / support / shot) has per-camera controls in the panel: show/hide, text size, keep tag text upright, and anchor (an anchored box stays where you put it on the plot instead of following the camera). Lights have the same show / text size / anchor controls for their own details box.

Shift-click several details boxes — cameras and lights together if you like — to align, distribute, or resize them as a group. To change every camera on a setup at once, or to auto-tidy every box, deselect everything and open the panel — see Setup Options under Settings below.

Select a camera and use the color swatches in the properties panel — the standard palette plus a rainbow custom swatch that opens a full color picker (your recent custom colors are remembered). Colors are also available from the right-click menu.

To color cameras automatically by letter, open the Operator Roster and turn on Color cameras by letter — assign a color to each letter and every camera adopts it the moment you tag it.

First, set a scale reference — tap the ruler icon and draw a line across something whose real-world length you know (a stage edge, a marked distance on your ground plan), then type in the real measurement. After that, all distances on your plot read in feet and inches.

Once scale is set, FOV readouts also show real coverage distance.

Tap the light icon in the left toolbar (it looks like a Fresnel lens). A picker pops up with light types — Fresnel, Panel, Tube, Sun. Pick one and tap on the canvas to place it.

Each light has its own throw, spread, color temperature (CCT), and tint. Tweak them from the properties panel. Drag the rotation handle to aim the light.

There can only be one Sun per setup — it represents directional sunlight at a specific time of day. Drag it to rotate the angle and reposition where the light source comes from.

Tap the Set icon in the toolbar (the chair icon). A grid of 30 set elements pops up — chairs, sofas, tables, beds, doors, windows, kitchen and bathroom fixtures, cars, trees, and more — grouped by category.

Pick one and tap on the canvas to place it. Each item is sized to real-world inches based on your scale reference, so a queen bed actually takes up the right amount of space relative to your stage.

Yes. Select any set piece and use the rotation handle, or type exact dimensions into the W/H fields in the properties panel. Real-world units appear in the panel matching your scale reference.

Tap the image icon in the toolbar and pick a photo from your device. The picture lands on the canvas — drag to position, drag the corners to resize.

The Constrain proportions checkbox in the properties panel keeps width and height locked together while you resize. It's on by default.

Right-click (or long-press on iPad) on any image, choose Crop. A crop rectangle appears in place over the image with rule-of-thirds guides and 8 handles. Drag the handles inward to crop, or drag the inside of the rectangle to reposition.

Press Enter or tap Done to commit. Press Esc or Cancel to abort.

Tap the T icon in the toolbar and tap on the canvas. A text box appears — double-tap or use the properties panel to type your label.

Eight box shapes are available — rectangle, rounded rectangle, ellipse, hexagon, diamond, star, plus more. The text box auto-grows to fit content; you can never resize it smaller than the text needs.

Yes. The font picker shows the system fonts (Avenir, Arial, Georgia, etc.) plus any custom fonts you've added. To add custom fonts, drop the .woff2 files into the /fonts/ folder on your CamPlot deploy and add an entry to /fonts/manifest.json.

Each font name in the picker renders in its own typeface, so you can see what it looks like before picking.

The pen icon in the toolbar lets you draw freehand strokes — call out a path, mark a hot zone, sketch in a quick blocking note. Tap the pen again to open its config (color, weight, stylus-only).

Use the eraser icon next to the pen to remove individual strokes. Click the eraser icon a second time to deactivate it.

Use the measure tool (ruler icon). Tap two points on the canvas and you'll get a line with the real distance read out alongside it, in your scale reference units. Measurements live on the Annotations layer — hide that layer in your final export if you don't want them in the deliverable.

CamPlot has seven built-in layers, from bottom to top:

1. Ground Plan — the venue background
2. Set — set pieces, shapes, text labels
3. Pictures — inserted photos
4. Subjects — talent positions
5. Lights — lighting fixtures
6. Cameras — every camera
7. Annotations — pen strokes and measurements

The Layers panel sits at the bottom of the Setups sidebar (there's also a Layers button in the top bar — on phones it opens as a bottom sheet). Each row has an eye icon (visibility) on the right and a lock icon next to it.

You can also create your own custom layers (add/rename/delete rows at the top of the stack) and assign any element to them from its properties panel.

Yes — expand the Cameras layer row (chevron after the name) for two extra eyes: Details Boxes and FOV Cones. Handy for a clean plot view without hiding the cameras themselves. Other layers can be made expandable per element type in Settings → Layers.

Settings → Layers lets you reorder the render stacking (↑↓ per layer), choose which layers appear in the list, and change which element types belong to which layer. This config is per device.

Tap the eye icon on that layer's row. The eye becomes a slashed eye and the layer name dims. Anything on that layer becomes invisible AND uninteractable — you can't accidentally select or drag-select hidden elements.

A locked layer stays visible on screen but its elements can't be selected, moved, or edited. Useful when you want to keep the ground plan visible while you arrange cameras without ever bumping it. Tap the lock icon to toggle.

No. Layer visibility and locks are per setup, per device. Hide Lights in Setup 1 and they're still visible in Setup 2. Your hide/lock state never travels with the saved data, so people you share a link with always see everything regardless of what you've hidden locally.

Yes — exports respect current layer visibility. If you hide Annotations and then export to PDF, your pen strokes and measurements won't be in the file. This is useful for delivering a clean final version while keeping your working notes intact.

Use the eye and lock buttons on the Layers header row — they toggle visibility / locks for all layers at once.

Select any camera or subject, then in the right-side panel find the Movement section. Tap + Add position to place the next stop, then tap where you want it to go on the canvas. Repeat for multi-stop paths.

When you have at least one movement position, the play button in the top bar becomes active. Tap it and your blocking animates in real time.

The path tool (the curved-line icon in the left toolbar) lets you draw multi-point paths directly on the canvas — useful for choreographing complex blocking or showing anticipated camera moves without attaching them to a specific camera.

Tap to place each point. Double-tap the last point to finish the path. Select the path to adjust its color, weight, and dash style.

Yes. In the Movement section for any element, you can pick from three playback modes:

• One-way — runs through the path once and stops at the end
• Loop — at the end, jumps instantly back to the start and runs again
• Bounce — at the end, reverses along the same arcs back to the start, then forward again — useful for walk-and-talk blocking

Yes. Step to any position along a path and rotate the camera or change its lens/FOV distance — the rotation and framing are saved to that position. On playback the camera eases between them, so it can pan, push in, and zoom while it travels.

Positions can also linger for extra beats (set per position in the Movement list), and whole paths can be copied to another camera via right-click → Copy Path / Paste Path.

Right-click any setup (or long-press on touch) and choose Add to group ▸. You can pick an existing group or create a new one — useful for organizing by episode, day, or scene.

Setups in the same group cluster together under a bold header in the sidebar. Drag the small handle next to the group name to move the whole group at once. Drag a single setup between groups to reassign it. Setups with no group sit at the bottom.

Double-click a group header to rename it. Right-click a header to rename or delete (deleting a group puts its setups back into the ungrouped section).

If two or more setups happen at the same moment in time (think picture-in-picture, or a multi-stage simultaneous broadcast), mark them as simultaneous. Right-click a setup → Simultaneous with ▸ → pick or create a group.

Setups in the same simultaneous group get a small color dot on the right edge of their row in the sidebar. This affects how the Camera Report calculates totals for the whole show — simultaneous setups have their gear summed (because you need it all at once), while non-simultaneous setups share gear (because they don't run at the same time).

Tap the Roster icon in the top bar (between the toolbar and ground plans). Assign each camera letter a name and camera type — once per project.

From then on, tagging any camera with a letter fills in the right operator and rig (changing the tag re-fills them too). Update the roster and every plot in your project updates instantly.

Each letter can also have a color — tap the color dot on its row. Turn on Color cameras by letter at the top of the roster and every camera takes its letter's color automatically; the letter box in the roster tints to match.

Right-click any setup → Hide. Hidden setups stay in your sidebar (greyed out) but don't appear when others view your shared link. Use this for drafts or alternates you're not ready to share. Hide doesn't affect Totals math — hidden setups are excluded from per-show calculations.

Inventory is a per-show list of the cameras, lenses, and support gear you have available. It powers two things: autocomplete suggestions when typing camera details, and the Totals calculation in your Camera Report — including warnings if you're using more gear than you have.

Each item has an optional quantity. Leave the quantity blank to mark something as unlimited (handy for things like "Sticks" where you have plenty).

Tap the Inventory icon in the top bar (between Roster and Ground Plans). Three sections — Cameras, Lenses, Support — each with a "+ Add" button. Type the name and the quantity if you know it.

You can also add gear by typing it directly into the camera properties panel. As you type, you'll see autocomplete suggestions from your existing inventory. Type something brand new and it gets added to inventory automatically (with a quick confirmation toast).

The first time you open Inventory on an existing project, CamPlot pre-fills it with everything already on your plots — no manual setup required.

CamPlot canonicalizes spellings to keep your inventory clean. If you've already added "FX6" to inventory and you type "fx6" or "FX 6" on a camera, it auto-corrects to the canonical "FX6" — so the Totals math doesn't double-count the same item under different spellings. Case and whitespace are normalized; the canonical spelling is whatever you used the first time. If duplicate rows ever sneak in, the inventory detects and merges them automatically the next time it opens.

Use is the peak number of that item in play at one time across your setups (simultaneous setups add together). Stock is how many you actually have — leave it blank for unlimited. Use turns red when it exceeds stock.

Italic items were added automatically because something on a plot references them — they disappear on their own when nothing uses them anymore (great for typos). Items you add by hand, or give a stock number, stay put. Renaming an item here renames it on every camera across all setups.

If you place more cameras of a certain type (or use more of a certain lens / support item) than you've set as the quantity in your inventory, the Camera Report's Totals section flags it in red italics. Example:

5 × FX6 short 2 from inventory

This catches accidental over-allocation before you find out on set.

Open the Camera Report from the top bar. At the bottom of the report, the Totals section shows counts of each camera type, lens, and support item.

The Setup/Project toggle switches between two views:

• Setup — gear used in the currently active setup only.
• Project — peak concurrent gear needed across the entire project. CamPlot looks at all non-hidden setups, sums up the gear within each simultaneity group, and reports the maximum at any single moment. This is the number to give your rental house.

Toggle "Show breakdown" to see exactly which setups (or simultaneity groups) drive the peak count.

Ground plans are the underlying drawings of your venue — stage layouts, furniture, seating, markings — that you draw (or import) once and reuse across all setups in a project.

Tap the Ground Plans icon in the top bar to manage them: draw one in edit mode, or import a PDF or image of the production designer's plan. Assign a ground plan to any setup, then position, scale, rotate, and flip it per plot, and set its opacity so it sits quietly under your cameras.

The Ground Plan layer is locked by default. Unlock it in Layers and you can drag, scale, and rotate it — or edit its elements — right on the plot; changes to the ground plan itself show up on every setup that uses it. Double-click a ground-plan element to open the full editor.

The snip tool captures a rectangle of your canvas as an image element — grab a corner of a setup and drop it anywhere, or send it to the Ground Plan layer to reuse across setups. Great for building composite overviews.

Yes — the table tool drops a real grid on the canvas: add/remove rows and columns, merge cells, size row/column ranges, per-cell text and bold, border and background colors, an optional title, plus copy/paste of cell blocks between tables. Perfect for shot lists or schedules living right on the plot.

Tap the Share icon in the top bar. Toggle sharing on and you'll get a link you can copy and send via text, email, or Slack. Anyone with the link can view your plots (view-only mode — they can't edit).

Viewers see real-time updates as you change the plot. They don't need an account to view.

Tap the Export icon in the top bar. Choose a single setup or the whole project. You can export as:

• PDF — properly formatted for landscape or portrait, single or multi-page.
• JPEG — a single image of the current setup, good for quick sharing.

If anything sits outside the canvas edges (movement paths, notes in the margin), CamPlot asks whether to export the canvas only or include the outside content.

Yes — the round button below the top-right corner hides every panel and bar so the plot fills the screen (viewers get it too). While full screen: the ☰ button next to the setup title opens a setups list, the ‹ › buttons step through setups, and creators get a floating dockable toolbar (pick its tools in Settings → Workspace). Tap the button again to exit.

Tap the Camera Report icon in the top bar — a formatted summary of every camera in the current setup: letter, operator, camera type, lens, support, and shot notes, ready to print or share with your DIT.

The report auto-refreshes when you switch setups, and the Cameras tab highlights lens/support changes versus the previous setup in the same group — spot re-rigs at a glance. Printing uses whichever tab you're on.

Tap the lock icon in the top bar to freeze the plot. Elements can't be moved or edited while locked. Use it when you're presenting your plot, or when you want to zoom and pan around without accidentally nudging things.

A scouting viewfinder built into CamPlot: point your iPhone or iPad at the set and see the frame through any real camera body (Alexa, FX6, Komodo, and two dozen more) at any focal length, in that camera's own sensor modes (4.6K Open Gate, 4.5K LF 2.39, Full Frame Crop 5K, Super 16 — whatever that body actually scans), with 16:9, 2.35, 2.39, or 4:3 frame lines and a massive LUT library — more than 120 cinema looks in nine packs, applied as true 3D LUTs on the GPU, alongside CamPlot's own Pop, Stylistic and Cinematic and four slots for your own .cube files. Any library look can be exported for the camera you're shooting, already converted to its log.

It's a Creator feature, and capture runs in the installed CamPlot app on iPhone / iPad (Add to Home Screen — your Account panel has the steps). It works in landscape with the camera on the left; open it any other way and it'll ask you to rotate.

Two ways:

• The viewfinder button in the top bar opens a panel with Capture and your Library.
• From a camera on your plot: open its Field of View section and tap Director's Viewfinder. The finder becomes that camera — its Camera Type matches to the real sensor, the lens from Shot Details sets the zoom range, and your sensor mode and frame lines carry over.

Inside: a stack of widgets on the left — Camera (brand-grouped list), Sensor (tap to cycle that camera's real scan windows — the widget shows the short name, e.g. 4.5KOG or FFC5K; bodies with only one window, like the FX6, stay dimmed), Aspect (tap to cycle), LUT (touch and hold — the reel comes out under your finger; drag up/down for looks, left/right for shelves), False Color, Torch (in the app: tap for on/off, hold and slide left/right for brightness) and Sun Path. Which widgets appear depends on the capture mode you're in. Settings is the gear in the top-right corner, next to the close button, and the ? button beside it opens this manual. Settings is organized into sections — General, Photo Mode, Video Mode, Exposure Meter, Monitor Calibrator, Groundplan Scanner, Sun Path — tap one and its panel slides in beside the list. Tapping outside the panels closes them. The lens roll, titled "Lens Picker", rides the frame's right edge (swipe to spin through your inventory lenses) and the zoom wheel wraps around the shutter — drag it like the iOS camera dial. Double-tap the image for full screen: the frame maximizes and the readouts move inside it; double-tap again to come back, or use the chip that appears in the gear's place with its arrows pointing inward. The corner chip at rest is the Library.

In the app, tap the image to focus there — a one-shot autofocus at that exact point — and hold for half a second to lock focus (the FOCUS control shows it held; tap that control to hand focus back). Hold the FOCUS control itself and slide to pull focus, like pulling to a mark. A lens you haven't calibrated shows a small close↔far gauge instead of distances.

Readings sit in two rows, and the row tells you what you can touch. Below the frame are the ones you read — level, compass, white balance, lens. Above the frame are the ones you set. As each of those arrives you'll hold and drag it up or down to change it, and hold it still to switch what it's showing.

Capture modes. Swipe the capture button up or down to spin through them, or tap one of the neighbours to jump straight to it. Photo is always home — the finder opens there every time.

Below Photo: Exposure Meter and Monitor Calibrator. Above it: Video and Groundplan Scan. Each mode brings its own widgets in the left rail and its own readings around the frame.

Video, Groundplan Scan, the Exposure Meter and the Monitor Calibrator all work now (see below). They all need the CamPlot app, because they use camera controls a web browser doesn't expose.

Swipe the capture button up once from Photo to the red stop. Video is Photo plus recording — the same lenses, sensor windows, frame lines, LUTs and zoom wheel — and the graded look on screen is baked into the file: what you see is what records. On iPhones that support it (15 Pro and newer), Apple Log — and Apple Log 2 on the newest Pros — sits at the top of the LUT list: pick it and the take records as a true 10-bit log file for grading later, with the monitor showing the flat log image; pick any LUT to go back to the graded pipeline.

Tap the red button to start; a timer appears at the top of the frame; tap again to stop. The finished take saves straight to your camera roll in a "CamPlot Videos" album (never the CamPlot library). The first recording asks for microphone access — takes record with sound. You can't record while you're on a call: the call holds the microphone, so recording is refused until it ends, and a call arriving mid-take stops the take rather than quietly losing its sound.

Stabilize is a rail widget (it takes Sun Path's slot in this mode) — tap to cycle Off → On → Cine → Sport. The monitor always stays live: with Cine or Sport picked, the screen shows steady On-level stabilization while the heavier future-frame smoothing runs in the background on the recording itself — so the file comes out smoothed and the view never lags or jolts when you hit record. The shutter reads as an angle and steps through the cinema stops — 45°, 90°, 120°, 180°, 240° and the rest of the wheel, including 172.8°. Frame rate (default 23.98), resolution (1080p / 4K) and codec (HEVC / H.264) live in the viewfinder's Settings under Video Recording — the preview runs at the chosen frame rate, like a real camera.

Needs the CamPlot iPhone app and a View+ or Creator account.

Swipe the capture button down once from Photo to the yellow stop. The phone's own auto-exposure becomes a light meter: its live ISO, shutter and aperture collapse into one scene EV, and four dials — ISO, T-stop, Shutter and ND — describe the camera you're metering for. The lens picker and zoom work here just like Photo, and a tap on the image focuses.

Unlocked dials chase the light by themselves, in priority order. Drag a dial up or down to set it yourself — that locks it, and the others redistribute. Tap a dial to lock or unlock it. The toggles next to EV switch what each dial speaks: T-stops ↔ f-stops, shutter angle ↔ speed, ND hard glass ↔ variable. The READING at the bottom right always shows the gap — ±0.0 when you're there, or how many stops over or under. Lock all four and it behaves like a classic meter: you turn the knobs, it shows the error.

The PRIORITY widget in the left rail changes which dials give way first: tap it and each dial wears a numbered blue border — drag one dial onto another to reorder, then tap the widget again to save.

Tap the yellow button to HOLD a reading while you walk it over to camera; tap again to go live. While it's holding, the button turns amber and breathes, the zoom wheel and the other modes' buttons give way, and a green SAVE circle appears underneath it — the same pair of circles a photo review uses. Nothing can be swiped away by accident while a reading is up. SAVE keeps a photo of the moment with the full reading burned along the bottom. The Meter widget switches between Average and Spot — in Spot, tap anywhere on the image to meter that point (the tap focuses there too). Scrub the EV readout to bias the reference up to ±3 stops; tap it to zero. Needs the CamPlot iPhone app and a View+ or Creator account.

Swipe the capture button down twice from Photo to the colour-bar stop. Put a monitor in front of the phone showing a grayscale or colour-bar pattern from its own source (a deck, a camera, a test-pattern generator — CamPlot doesn't generate the pattern). Drag the LO box onto a near-black patch and the HI box onto a near-white one. Then tap the capture button to lock the camera: exposure, white balance (to daylight), focus and colour space are all pinned so nothing adapts under the reading. The LIVE tag on each card turns into readings.

Each card is a two-point grayscale readout the way a pro monitor's menu thinks: LOW · BIAS for the dark patch, HIGH · GAIN for the bright one, and a needle for R, G and B on each. Centred is on target; a needle to the right with a + number means the monitor shows too much of that colour at that level — turn that channel's trim down until the needle centres. The three always balance around zero because trims move colour, not brightness; set brightness with the EV pill before you lock. Set EV so the HI patch doesn't read CLIPPING and the LO patch doesn't read TOO DARK; ON AN EDGE means a box is straddling two patches.

This is guitar-tuner guidance, not a colorimeter. A phone camera can't measure absolute colour, but it is repeatable and it reads the relationship between channels well, which is what a trim needs. To cancel the phone's own colour bias, lock on a monitor you already trust and tap Zero now in Settings → Monitor Calibrator — from then on readings are relative to that monitor, per phone and lens. The TARGET widget cycles your reference white points (D65 · Rec.709 is built in; add others in Settings), and SHOW switches between both cards, Low only or High only. Gamma is stored with a target but not measured yet.

Needs the CamPlot app (the current build) and a View+ or Creator account.

Swipe the capture button up twice from Photo to reach Groundplan Scan (the blue stop), then tap it. Apple's room scanner takes over the screen and walks you around the room; tap Done when you've covered it.

The finished plan comes back inside the capture frame, with its real dimensions along the bottom. The left rail turns into scan tools:

• Furniture — show or hide the tables, chairs and appliances it recognised.
• Rulers — show or hide the dimension lines along the edges of the plan.
• Rotate — tap it once to arm it, then drag left and right across the plan to turn it. It moves gently on purpose, so you can land on the exact angle you want rather than jumping in steps. Tap again when you're done.

The rulers stay square to the screen while the plan turns under them — they're a scale reference, so they always read the true width and depth of what's drawn, whatever angle you've set.

Then choose what to do with it: To Project drops it straight into the ground plan library, already correctly scaled — no measuring needed. Camera Roll saves it as a picture. Rescan starts over and Discard throws it away.

Needs a LiDAR iPhone or iPad (the Pro models), iOS 16 or newer, the CamPlot app, and a View+ or Creator account. On a phone without LiDAR the mode explains itself rather than failing.

Tap the shutter, review, then Save:

• The full-quality picture goes to your Photos, into a CamPlot album in the installed app or through the share sheet on the web.
• The app keeps the readings — camera, sensor window, aspect, lens, ISO, shutter, aperture, white balance, LUT, bearing, horizon, LiDAR distance, sun position, coordinates — on the device, alongside a thumbnail and a pointer back to the original. That is what the Library shows. Nothing is uploaded, it works with no signal, and it costs you no storage beyond the thumbnail.
• Opened from a camera on a plot? That one frame attaches to the camera as its reference (a thumbnail in its FOV section), syncs with the project like any other project data, and the camera's FOV cone updates to the exact lens you framed.

The chip in the top-right corner with the stacked frames — the number on it counts what has arrived since you last looked, like unread mail, and it clears once you close the Library. It opens full screen over the finder.

Everything the app has made is there, newest first and grouped by day, on three shelves — Photos, Videos and Scans. It opens on Photos. They are kept apart deliberately: a scan is a plan, not a photograph, and tapping one opens the scanner's own reviewer — 2D and 3D, furniture, rotate, colour, export — instead of showing it as a picture.

Tap a tile — or pinch it open with two fingers, watching it grow under them — and the shot takes over the whole screen with its readings riding on top of it: the settings down the left, the exposure across the top, where and when along the bottom. One tap on the picture clears all of that away and one brings it back, so there is no separate full-screen mode to step through — this is it, with and without its instruments. Swipe sideways for the next shot and the one before; swipe up or down, or pinch together, to come back to the grid. A take plays where it sits, straight from your camera roll — nothing is duplicated.

Select lets you pick several at once to export as pictures, add to a shot list, or delete. Tap the tiles you want, or press and drag sideways across a row to take a run of them in one gesture — dragging up or down still scrolls the shelf. Deleting removes them from the Library and asks iOS whether to delete the pictures from your camera roll too; answer no and the pictures stay put.

Shot lists is the second tab at the top of the Library. A list is a plan you fill in, not only a record of what you already took: it has a name, and every shot in it has a name of its own.

+ Row adds a line with no frame yet — “INT. KITCHEN — wide, morning” — that you name on the scout and shoot later. There are two ways to give it a picture: press + ADD SHOT on the empty row and the Library opens to choose from, and what you pick lands on that row; or go the other way with Add to list from an open shot or a multi-pick, which adds to the end. To reorder, drag a shot by the grip on its left — or press and hold anywhere on the row until it lifts, then move it. Taking a row out never touches the Library. A room scan cannot go in a list (the export is a document); a video contributes its frame.

Export PDF builds a contact sheet — four or five shots a page, each with its frame, its name, the rig it was shot on and its readings in four columns, plus a QR code that opens where it was shot in Apple or Google Maps (your choice, on the toggle beside the button). The type is real text, not a picture of text, so it stays sharp at any size, prints properly and can be searched and copied. In the app it comes in two taps: the button builds the document, then reads Save PDF — tap again and the share sheet opens. (iOS only opens one on a fresh tap, and rendering the pages spends the tap that started it.) On the web it just downloads. Export and Delete also sit on each list in the index, so you can send one on without opening it.

Looking at your own shots is free. Building lists and exporting the document is View+.

Open Settings (the gear, top-right of the finder) and pick your phone model (Settings → General → About → Model Name if unsure) — each model's real lens data drives the math, and CamPlot automatically switches to your phone's 0.5× or telephoto lens when the simulated focal calls for it.

Settings → General also chooses which mode the finder opens in (always the same one, or wherever you left it) and holds camera diagnostics. Photo Mode and Video Mode each have a Save current as default button — the camera, sensor window, aspect, LUT and lens you have up right now become what that mode opens with — plus a switch to reopen at last-used instead, and a list of the readouts with an on/off switch for each, separately for the standard and full-screen views. Video Mode can keep its own lens list (turn off Use Photo Mode's lens list). Exposure Meter holds the cascade priority order (drag the rows), Monitor Calibrator keeps your reference targets and the zero, and Groundplan Scanner sets whether furniture and rulers start shown when a scan comes back.

Android isn't supported yet. Android browsers don't tell apps which camera lens is which, so the finder can end up measuring focal lengths against the wrong lens — and a viewfinder that reports the wrong focal length is worse than none. We'd rather withhold it than ship one you can't trust. Frames captured on your other devices still show up in the viewfinder library on Android.

When you dial wider than your phone's widest lens, the center of the frame stays accurate and the outer band is stretched and grey-washed — that band is approximation, and the readout says so.

In the CamPlot iOS app your phone model is detected automatically, and Safari names the lenses itself — no picking needed (a manual pick always wins if you make one).

CamPlot ships a massive LUT library — more than 120 cinema looks — and they're all true 3D LUTs applied on the GPU, not a filter over the picture. They arrive in nine packs: Movie Inspired (looks built from well-known films), Filmic, Vintage, Contemporary, Expedition, Avant-Garde, Vibrant, Single-Tone and Influencers. CamPlot's own Pop, Stylistic and Cinematic come with it, and you can import as many of your own .cube files as the phone will hold.

All of it is on the LUT widget itself — you never have to open settings to reach a look, and there is no menu to tap through. Touch the widget and hold: a reel comes out under your finger the moment it lands. Drag up and down through the looks on a shelf, left and right through the shelves — which move with your finger rather than snapping, so you can see where you are going before you get there. Each shelf is its own list and stops at its own ends: System is 709 and the Apple Log entries, and there is nothing above or below them. The shelves recycle — past the last one is System again — so neither direction ever dead-ends.

The reel has a ruler down each side of the corner: the vertical one is the looks, the horizontal one across the top carries the shelf names, with one pip per shelf underneath so you can see it is the fourth of thirteen. The shelves are System (709, the clean camera feed; in Video on a capable iPhone, Apple Log and Apple Log 2, which record true log with no grade baked in), then Favorites, Your LUTs, CamPlot, then the nine packs — and Favorites and Your LUTs only appear once there is something on them, so a phone you have just installed on shows System, CamPlot and the library. The picture regrades live at every stop, so you find a look by looking rather than by reading names — release to keep whatever is under the marker.

Favorites are a shelf of up to ten, right after System, for the looks you keep coming back to. It starts empty — there is no Favorites shelf at all until you put something on it. Fill them in Settings (the gear) → LUTs, which is favorites on the left and your own LUTs over the library on the right, with a search box across every pack. Nothing is locked behind them: the rest of the library is still one tap away on the widget. The whole thing is cached on the device, so it works with no signal.

Your own LUTs have no slot count any more — the last stop on the Your LUTs shelf is Import a .cube…: scrubbing past it does nothing, resting on it opens the file picker, so a LUT handed to you on set never means a trip into settings. Rename them, set which base each expects, favorite them, export them. When the phone genuinely runs out of room it says so rather than losing one quietly.

Yes — that's the point. Every library look has an Export button in Settings → LUTs (on the favorites rows, the library rows and any of your own LUTs), and the way you see it on the app is the way you get it on your cinema camera.

Here's the catch Export handles for you: a look is a Rec.709 LUT, and no cinema camera is feeding it Rec.709 — a Sony is putting out S-Log3, a Canon C-Log3, an ALEXA LogC4. Load a 709 look straight onto log footage and it falls apart. So when you tap Export, CamPlot asks which camera log you're shooting, then builds one LUT that does both jobs in the right order: the manufacturer's own log→709 conversion first, your look second (the same two-node chain a colourist would build in Resolve, never the reverse).

You can pick from 18 log formats across ten manufacturers: Apple Log and Apple Log 2 · ARRI LogC3 and LogC4 · Sony S-Log3 and S-Log2 · Canon C-Log3, C-Log2 and C-Log · Panasonic V-Log · Fujifilm F-Log, F-Log2 and F-Log2C · Nikon N-Log · RED Log3G10 · Blackmagic Film Gen 5 · DJI D-Log and D-Log M. The bases are the manufacturers' own published conversion LUTs, not approximations.

What you get is a single .cube — plain ASCII, 33³, with a short filename like Tron - S-Log3.cube, because in-camera LUT parsers are strict about both. On iPhone it comes out through the share sheet (AirDrop it, drop it in Files, put it on the card); on a computer it downloads. Load it as a monitoring LUT in the camera, on the monitor or at the DIT cart, and the image matches the frame you graded on the phone. Choose 709 as the base and you get the plain look instead — the original file, byte for byte.

Your own imported .cube files export the same way, which makes the finder a LUT converter too: bring in a 709 look you already own, export it for S-Log3 or V-Log, and it's ready for the camera. (An imported LUT's export is rebuilt from the stored preview texture, so it carries preview precision rather than the original file's — you already own that original.) CamPlot's own Pop, Stylistic and Cinematic are the exception: they stay in the app and have no Export button.

Tap the Sun Path widget in the left rail. Using your precise location and the compass, CamPlot draws the sun path over your framed shot: a dashed arc with hour dots and time labels, a small "now" marker, and a soft glowing sun that rides the arc wherever you point and tilt the camera — labeled with the exact time the real sun will be in that spot. Golden-hour planning while you're still framing the shot. Hold the widget to see the path for a future date — next week, next month, or any day you pick.

It asks for location and motion permission on first use (the compass and level readings below the frame need the same motion permission — if you dismissed a prompt, tap the Sun Path widget or anywhere in the finder to bring it back). By default the sun path is baked into captured frames; turn that off under Settings → Sun Path, which also holds the date picker and a switch to turn the sun path on automatically whenever the finder opens.

Tap the False Color widget in the left rail to cycle Off → ARRI → Spectrum → Off.

ARRI is the scale you already know from a monitor — purple and blue mark near-black clipping, green marks 18% grey, pink marks typical skin tone, yellow and red mark near-white and clipped highlights; everything else stays grayscale so the flagged zones read clearly. Spectrum is the continuous rainbow version, dark to bright with no grey gaps.

Whichever you pick, a key appears along the bottom of the capture frame so you never have to remember what a colour means — the ARRI one names its landmarks (BLACK, 18% GREY, SKIN, CLIP), the Spectrum one is an IRE ruler from 0 to 100. The strip is painted from the same numbers as the picture, so a colour on the key is exactly the colour on the image at that exposure.

Hold the False Color widget to hide the key once you know the scale and want the frame clear — hold again to bring it straight back. Turning False Color on always brings it back too, so you never have to remember you hid it; switching between ARRI and Spectrum leaves it as you set it.

By default it's a live monitoring aid only — a capture saves the true, graded image. If you want the map itself in what you save, Settings → Shot Info → Burn in False Color has a switch for each: photos, video recordings and Exposure Meter saves, all off to begin with. The key along the bottom is never included either way.

Tap the calculator button at the bottom-left of the canvas and the Calculators open full screen. It's a Creator feature — five tools in one place on a single milled rail at the top: Depth of Field, Media, Exposure, Sensor Sizes and Sun & Moon. Tap the rail or swipe left and right to move between them; the lit brass segment shows which one you're in. The ? beside the close button opens the built-in manual, and the × closes the hub.

Pick a camera (ARRI, Sony, Canon, RED, DJI, GoPro and more), a recording format (resolution · codec), a frame rate, and a card size — CamPlot shows the media that camera actually shoots on and how many hours and minutes fit, with the data rate underneath. Rates come from manufacturers' published numbers — treat them as planning figures, not lab measurements.

Choose Full Frame or Super 35, then drag the focal length, aperture, and subject distance rollers — near limit, far limit, total depth, and hyperfocal update live, and a photographic preview shows the actual look: the subject sharpens or melts against a real scene whose foreground, midground, and background each blur by their true distance.

Sensor Sizes overlays up to three cameras' sensors to scale — see exactly how much bigger an Alexa 65 is than an FX6, with widths, heights, and diagonals read out.

Exposure is four camera gears — ISO, aperture (f or T), shutter (angle or speed), and ND (variable, hard, or stops). Lock all but one and roll any locked dial: the free one visibly rolls to the value that holds your exposure, in exact 1/3-stop steps. A frame-rate row handles the 24 → 48fps kind of question in one tap.

It is a location scout you can do from a desk. Search an address, tap the target to use where you are, or drag the satellite map — the crosshair in the middle is the spot everything is worked out for, and you can zoom in past the imagery's own limit rather than hitting a blank tile.

Over the map, the day is drawn as one swept dark field: every patch of ground your subject shades between first light and last. Ground outside it never sits in that shadow, whatever the hour. Around it a brass hour ring — and each bead sits where the sun is at that hour, not where its shadow lands. The hour you're scrubbed to lights up, with its beam running in to the crosshair and the shadow spear pointing the other way.

Underneath, the same day side on: left to right is the local clock, up is true altitude, the warm band is golden hour and the blue one civil twilight. Drag it to scrub and the map follows. A shadow ruler along the bottom reads how long a shadow is as a multiple of whatever throws it — 5× means a six-foot stand lays down thirty feet.

Switch to Moon and the whole tool re-reads for the moon: its own arc, moonrise, moonset and the phase drawn at its real terminator. Both overlays them, which is what you want when you're planning a night exterior and need to know whether the moon is behind camera. A moon shadow only appears once the moon is above 15° and more than half lit.

Times belong to the spot, not to your phone — drop the pin in Morocco and you get Moroccan time, daylight saving included, with no connection needed. Save scout card bakes the map, the section and every number into one picture and sends it to Photos, ready to text to the gaffer.

Playback, annotation (view-only), the floating toolbars, and the viewfinder capture button are round floating buttons that dock to the four screen corners. Drag one anywhere and it snaps to the nearest corner; tap to expand it into its full bar, anchored to the button's spot. Expanding one collapses the others, and they all automatically slide out of the way when panels and bars open — and glide back when they close.

Yes — grab the grip at the bottom of the left toolbar and drag outward: the bar melts into a floating tools button under your finger; release to dock it at any corner. Drag the button back against the left edge (a faded ghost toolbar previews the docking) and it becomes the fixed bar again. On phone-width screens the toolbar always floats. A second tools button with up to 7 more tools can be enabled in Settings → Workspace. Collapsing a floating toolbar always returns you to the Select tool.

Touching the canvas slides the top bar away so your plot fills the screen — the canvas stays perfectly still while it happens. A thin line at the top edge with a small drawer pull marks where it's hiding; tap the pull (or anywhere on the line) to bring it back.

The Director's Viewfinder capture button — tap it to jump straight into capture mode. It only appears on devices that can capture (the installed iPhone/iPad app), and you can turn it off in Settings → Workspace or from the viewfinder drawer.

Tap the gear icon in the top bar. The Settings panel slides in from the right, organized into sections.

Yes. In Settings → Font, pick a font, color, weight, and size for each of:

• Subject Tags — the letter or initials that float over each subject
• Camera Tags — the camera letter (also applies to lights)
• Camera Detail Labels — operator/lens/support text under each camera
• Setup Labels — the name of each setup as shown on tabs and exports

Changes apply live to every element of that type in your project.

In Settings → Canvas: landscape/portrait presets, a Canvas Size slider that grows the document up to 2× (per setup), a Rotate 90° button that turns the whole plot with everything on it, grid modes, and per-setup canvas and background colors.

Deselect everything and open the properties panel (chevron on the right edge) — instead of an empty panel you get Setup Options: universal controls for the current setup only.

Change every camera's size, tag size/bold/color, and details boxes (size, show, anchor) at once; every subject's size and tag styling; plus the canvas color, background color, canvas size, rotation, and ground plan opacity. Other setups are untouched.

Yes — Settings → Hot Keys. Every tool and action (including single-key toggles like X for subject lock, D for FOV distance lock, , / . to resize the selection) can be rebound: click the key, press a new one. System shortcuts like Cmd Z stay fixed.

With nothing selected, ↑/↓ step through setups and ←/→ jump between groups.

Most settings are per-show. Layer visibility/locks and the Layers/Hot Keys/Workspace configs are per device. Default units (feet vs. meters) are global.

No. Share links are view-only and work in any browser — on a phone, tablet, or desktop. Your camera ops can pull up the plot on their phone without signing up.

Currently share links give access to the whole project — viewers can flip through all setups. You can hide specific setups from sharing in the setup tabs (tap the eye icon on any tab to toggle its visibility to viewers).

Yes. Tap the Share icon and toggle sharing off. The link is instantly invalidated. Turn it back on and you'll get a fresh link.

Yes. In the Share list, flip a person from View to COLLAB (they need a Creator account). Collaborators edit the project live, just like you — everyone stays in sync in real time.

You stay in control: the top bar's collaboration button shows a log of each editing session with a summary of what changed, and a one-tap Undo this session if something needs rolling back.

View-only users get a floating pencil button that expands into a private markup toolbar: freehand strokes in four colors, an eraser, and a notes pad. Annotations are private to each viewer — they never change your plot and other people never see them — and they sync to that viewer's other devices.

The toolbar and notes pad are draggable and dock to any screen edge. Viewers also get their own light/dark toggle in the top bar.

Tap the Notify button in the top bar. CamPlot auto-composes a message summarizing what changed since your last notify (per setup) — edit it if you like, then send. Everyone you've shared the project with gets a push notification on devices where they've enabled them, and a banner in the app.

Crew members enable notifications from the one-time prompt (or their Account panel) — tapping a notification opens the project directly.

Tap an element to select it. Once selected, you can immediately drag it, grab a corner to resize, or grab the rotation handle above it to rotate — no waiting, no long-press needed.

If your finger lands on empty canvas (or anywhere outside the selected element's body or handles), the gesture pans the canvas instead. So selection is the "pre-arming" gesture: select the thing you want to manipulate, then drag freely.

To keep the canvas visible while you're working. Tap once to select an element — the panel stays closed. Tap the same element again (or tap the chevron on the right edge of the screen) to expand the properties panel.

Once you've opened the panel, it stays open as you select different elements. Deselect (tap empty canvas) and the panel closes again.

Long-press anywhere on empty canvas to start a selection box, then drag across the elements you want. Or long-press a single element to add it to a multi-selection. Tap empty canvas to clear the selection.

Long-press (about half a second) on any element to bring up its context menu — same options as right-click on desktop: rename, duplicate, delete, group, simultaneous, etc.

Three ways: the ‹ › buttons next to the setup title in the canvas corner, a fast horizontal swipe across the canvas (a quick toss, so normal drags and pans aren't affected), or the setups sidebar/tabs. All of these work in full screen too.

On phone-width screens the properties panel opens as a translucent bottom sheet and the setups sidebar tucks into a bottom bar, so the canvas stays visible between them. The Layers button opens a compact bottom sheet as well.

Yes. The Pencil is treated as a precision input — you can tap, drag, rotate, and resize with it, and CamPlot automatically rejects palm touches while you're using it. No special setup needed; just start using the Pencil.

Open your Account panel and tap Install on this device. You'll get step-by-step instructions for your device. Once installed, CamPlot opens like a native app — fullscreen, fast, and works offline.

Yes — a true native Mac app, signed and notarized by Apple. On a Mac, open your Account panel and click Download CamPlot for Mac (or grab CamPlot.dmg directly), open the DMG, and drag CamPlot into Applications.

You get a native window with a real menu bar, a Dock icon, sign-in in an attached sheet, exports through the standard save panel — and full offline support: after its first online launch, the app opens with no internet and your shows are there. The app stays up to date automatically. If you were using the web version from your Dock before, the Mac app replaces it — just sign in and everything's where you left it.

Creator accounts can create, edit, and share plots. Full access to all tools. Starts with a free trial.

View Only accounts are free forever and can view shared plots from creators. Perfect for crew members who just need to see the plot, not build it.

No. You can continue with Google or use email & password — create an account with any email (password at least 8 characters with a letter and a number), and use Forgot password any time to reset by email.

Already signed up with Google? You can add a password to the same account via Forgot password — after that, both sign-in methods work.

Open your Account panel. Under Account Type, you'll see a Cancel Subscription button. You'll keep Creator access through the end of your billing period.