Cutvey Meter vs. Cine Meter II

What each one costs

	Cine Meter II	Cutvey Meter
Price, US App Store	$24.99 to buy. No in-app purchases listed.	Free to download. Unlock Forever, $19.99, once, or included in a Cutvey plan for each person on it.
Runs on	iPhone and iPad, iOS 15 or later	iPhone and iPad, iOS 17 or later, with an Apple Watch app (watchOS 10 or later)
Languages	English	41
Latest version	8.0, October 31, 2026	1.3
Made by	Adam Wilt	Cutvey LLC

From each app's own App Store page, checked November 2026.

Where Cine Meter II is strong

Cine Meter II has been the cinematographer's phone meter since 2014, and its App Store page opens with working ASC cinematographers saying so. It earned that by doing exposure the way a camera department already thinks about it. Point the phone at the scene and you get a waveform and false color, the same tools you read on a monitor, so you can see whether the window is clipping or the face is sitting where you want it before the camera is even built.

It also does incident metering, which a phone camera on its own cannot. Put a diffuser over the front camera and it reads the light falling on the subject in lux and foot-candles. Its reflected spot meter zooms in, so you can meter a face across the room. It can hold any of shutter, aperture, ISO or ND and solve for the one you leave free, and it can record readings over time. Its author is candid about where a phone stops, too: its own pages explain that a green correction on tubes and other spiky sources can be more than you need.

If your questions on set are mostly about exposure, it is very good at them, and it has years of use behind it.

Where Cutvey Meter leads

Cutvey Meter starts from the other question: what color is this light, and what do I put on it. It reads kelvin and tint from the camera's auto white balance or from a gray card, and it names the answer in the gel book you carry. Pin your key with REF, point at the next lamp, and the card says, for example, half CTO plus an eighth, LEE 205 and 223, 1 mired left over. Switch the book to Rosco and it solves again on Rosco's own values, which can land on a different stack.

Every reading carries a badge, HIGH, MEDIUM or LOW, and DIFFICULT SOURCE appears when the light flickers, when a gray card is lit by two colors at once or when the color is past what the camera can read. On a light you do not trust you can hold LOG for a reading from the sensor's own RAW pixels and compare the two.

Then it continues past color. Set your rig once and the ND for the scene stays on screen as the light changes. When the camera sees a light band, it names the nearest flicker-safe shutter for your mains power. It draws the sun's path over the live view, gives golden and blue hour on the place's own clock and plans any location on a map. The Apple Watch app shows the reading, the rig and the next light window on your wrist, and Double Tap logs a reading with the frame. It speaks 41 languages and costs $19.99, once.

Side by side

Job	Cine Meter II	Cutvey Meter
Color temperature and tint	Yes, with corrections to or from a target color	Yes, from the camera's auto white balance or a gray card filling the frame, one tap apart
The gel to match	CTO and CTB, and plus or minus green, as corrections	CTO or CTB named in LEE or Rosco numbers, at most two sheets, with the mired left over; plus or minus green marked approximate
Match two lights	Corrections to or from a target color	Pin one light with REF, or type a target from 2,000 to 10,000 K; MATCH shows within 5 mired
How far to trust a reading	Not on its listing	HIGH, MEDIUM or LOW on every reading, and DIFFICULT SOURCE for flicker, mixed light on a card or a color past the camera's range
A second opinion from RAW	Not on its listing	Hold LOG for a reading from the sensor's own pixels, on cameras that offer RAW
Reflected exposure	A zoomable spot meter	Reflected EV from the camera, and lux worked out from it assuming an 18% gray surface
Incident readings	Yes, in lux and foot-candles with a diffuser over the front camera	No
Waveform and false color	Yes, an RGB waveform and false color	No; a luma histogram
Solve the exposure	Shutter, shutter angle, aperture, ND or ISO	ND, ISO, stop or shutter, live for the rig you set once
Flicker	Not on its listing	Warns when the camera sees banding, with the nearest flicker-safe shutter for 50 or 60 Hz power
The sun	Not on its listing	The sun's path over the live camera, golden and blue hour on the place's own clock, and a map with a stand-in's shadow
Apple Watch	No	Yes: the live reading, the rig, the light windows, Double Tap to log, three complications
Keeping readings	Log recording of readings over time	Every logged reading kept with the frame you pointed at; one reading shared at a time

Cine Meter II from its App Store page and adamwilt.com, read November 2, 2026. "Not on its listing" means its App Store page and its own site do not name it.

One job, both apps: a kitchen interview at noon

A two-camera interview in a kitchen. Hard daylight comes through a window behind camera left, there is an LED panel through a frame of diffusion for the key, and a row of fluorescent tubes runs over the counter in the back of shot. Call is at ten.

With Cine Meter II, you check the exposure first. False color on the background tells you whether the window is blowing out, and the waveform shows where the face sits once the key is up. With the diffuser on, an incident reading at the talent's chin gives you the key level, and another from the fill side gives the ratio.

With Cutvey Meter, you start with color. Pin the window with REF, then point at the LED key: the card shows the gap in kelvin, mired and tint, and the gel that brings the panel to the window, or you type the target you want the scene to sit at. Point at the tubes and the tint leans green; hold LOG for the RAW reading to see how far the camera's estimate can be trusted on them. If the tubes band on camera, the meter says so and offers 144° (1/60) at 24 fps on 60 Hz power. The ND for the window-side wide stays on screen, and the sun screen shows whether the sun will move into that window by the time you turn around after lunch.

Neither app is wrong in that kitchen. They answer different questions, and a lot of crews carry both.

When to choose Cine Meter II

You judge exposure by waveform and false color, and want them on your phone.
You light green screens and want the evenness at a glance.
You want incident readings with a diffuser, on a phone.
Your phone is older than iOS 17 allows.
You want the app with the longest track record among cine meter apps.

Where Cutvey Meter falls short

It has no waveform and no false color. Its lux is worked out from the reflected exposure, assuming an 18% gray surface, so it is close on a gray card and an estimate anywhere else; it is no incident meter and no flash meter. Its flicker warning comes from banding the camera sees, so it does not measure a flicker's frequency, and it can miss a light locked to a multiple of your frame rate. It reads three color channels through a camera, like every phone app here, so it shows no spectrum and no color rendering figure. Readings leave the app one at a time: there is no export of the whole log and no iCloud sync. It needs iOS 17, and it has been on the App Store only since September 2026.

Using both

Both are one-time purchases with no subscription. If exposure is your department, Cine Meter II earns its place; if you are the one asked what gel to put on a lamp, what ND the wide needs or when the sun drops behind the building, Cutvey Meter answers all of those from one screen and one watch face. The full comparison lists the other color meter apps, with their prices and devices.