Crown & Flint

I’ve been using the Crown & Flint app for over a year to catalogue my 35mm film stock, and it’s a thoughtfully designed tool that fits naturally into a film workflow. The feature set is strong, the interface is clean, and it does exactly what you’d expect for managing rolls and shooting data. One thing to be aware of: using the Max reference image resolution caused consistent crashes for me when adding a new frame. Changing this setting to High resolved the issue completely, and the app has been stable ever since. With that adjustment, everything works as intended. Highly recommended.

The App Store Preview images of Crown + Flint give you a glimpse into the rich features and thought that went into this app’s design. And, to me, it’s a positive sign the developer solicits user feedback and updates the app regularly. Crown + Flint requires you enter some to as much information as you wish about your film, cameras, lenses, etc. The app keeps track of everything and allows you to export your metadata easily. For me, I loaded everything I could (i.e., 18 film rolls and 2 boxes with expiration dates; 3 cameras, 7 lenses, and lots of filters.) Then, I loaded a roll into my 35mm camera and went shooting. With each shot, I used the app subsequently to record my settings, a small image of the scene and the location (although you could easily use the app first to have it measure the scene’s exposure for you.) At the end of the roll, it was nice to have the app export my film metadata as a PDF (note: CSV and exiftool export formats also available) so I can transcribe (or use a plugin) to enter the data into Adobe LrC and NegativeLabPro after scanning my negatives. This app is great and is quite useful for my analog to digital workflow.

Just getting it all loaded up and love how organized it is. I tend to scatter my notebooks so this is going to be a huge help. One suggestion for future updates would be to add a quick way to note whether you intend to push or pull a loaded roll of film. I can still do it in the "notes" field, though!