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Using rollnote

Exposure dials

rollnote records aperture and shutter speed with two horizontal dials that work like the rings on a lens or a camera’s speed dial. They appear in step 3 of the frame wizard and when you edit a frame.

Both dials start unset (shown as a dash). A frame can be saved without either value, for example if you were shooting in auto mode and don’t know them.

Aperture

  • Range: f/0.7 to f/45, in third-stop steps.
  • Full stops are labelled on the dial: 0.7, 1, 1.4, 2, 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22, 32, 45.
  • The reading above the dial shows the current value, for example f/5.6.
  • The first time you touch the dial it starts from f/2.8.

Shutter speed

  • Range: 1/8000 s to 120 s, in third-stop steps, plus B (bulb).
  • Fast speeds read as fractions (1/125, 1/2); speeds of one second or longer read with a second mark (1”, 30”, 120”).
  • The first time you touch the dial it starts from 1/125.
  • Drag past the slow end of the dial to select B. A bulb frame records that the shutter was held open, but not for how long; write the actual time in the frame’s notes if you know it.

Using the dials

  • Drag the dial left or right, like turning a ring.
  • Tap a mark to jump straight to it.
  • Scroll with a mouse wheel or trackpad over the dial.
  • Keyboard: click or tab to a dial, then use the arrow keys to move one third of a stop at a time. Home and End jump to the ends of the range: f/0.7 and f/45 for aperture, bulb and 1/8000 for shutter speed.

Outside precision mode, the dials always settle on a marked third-stop value.

Precision mode

Some lenses and cameras have values that fall between the marks: an f/1.2 lens, a stepless aperture, or a camera with odd intermediate speeds. For those, press the crosshair button next to the dial’s reading.

Precision mode zooms the dial in four times and lets it stop between the marks:

  • aperture in steps of 0.1 (for example f/1.2 or f/6.3);
  • shutter speed in finer steps below one second, and in half-second steps from one second up;
  • the arrow keys move by a tenth of a stop instead of a third.

Press the crosshair again to leave precision mode. It is a display mode only: each dial remembers it separately while the form is open, and it resets the next time you open the form.

Changing your mind

On the edit form, the dials can move to any value but cannot be set back to unset once they have a value. If you need to remove an aperture or shutter speed you recorded by mistake, delete the frame and log it again.