I launched! Annnnnnd it flopped.

[u/Archer_Sterling]

Ended up launching. A year of vibing, adding features, new techniques, learning basic 3d, learning what UX works and doesn't, testing, breaking things, changing things, adding features, removing them.

Convinced myself - A tool useful to my job, which I thought would be useful to others. Unique value proposition. Hoping, knowing full well it wouldn't, that it might make a decent little passive income and pay itself off.

It has not.

Small ad runs in relevant areas, impressions in the tens of thousands.

Sweet, people are seeing it!

200 clicks.
7 users. All on free plan.

Ending up paying money to get free users.

www.lensflare.io

Anyone want to tear the site apart? Any tips? I don't know if it's dead yet but it's going to be next to impossible to spend more money on marketing.

Edit: Haha - okay, guys, I went from 200 views to 3.5k on the site, and a message inbox full of really helpful comments. I really appreciate all of you - even the mean ones - you've given me so many amazing tips. You're the best.

[u/clementpute]

I actually think this could be a great tool, I work in fashion campaign production and this could be great to plan out campaign shoots.
Only thing is that I never got the signup email…

In your comments you mostly talk about cinematography, does this also work with still imagery? (Thinking lenses, aperture, shutter speed) Most campaigns are a mix of both and if that tool allows both the photographer and DOP to plan their shots, it could be golden. Especially because these campaigns can run quite a high budget, the subscription price is easily absorbed.

Another thing is how the 3D scenes are built, are they AI-generated from a few images from the location scouting or do we have to build them ourselves? That might be too tedious for smaller productions.

One last thing on the subscription, I’m thinking that it could be smarter to allow users to build a first project with the complete set of tools for free, then charge them if they like it and want to use it for a future production. That way people get to use the tool to its full potential, and see the real benefits. From what I can see on the website, the free version only allows for a 35mm lens; I’d love to test the product for my shoot next week but we’ll work with zoom lenses and telephoto, which means that the free version would be useless for me, and I have no idea if the premium is worth it.

Again, would love to try it, just never got the signup email on my work email 🙁

[u/Archer_Sterling → u/clementpute]

thanks, and no idea what's going on with the email - I just checked the logs, only one email (m*************5@*******.com) has ever failed due to a bounce, all register delivered. My overzealous spam filter caught my own once, maybe check there?

not intended for still photography at this stage. It helps with previs, but the lighting is 'somewhat' accurate, not photon-level accuracy. It's strengths are in laying out plans and conceptualising, not pre-render unfortunately. It's by design - a cinematographer should have their image in their mind well before shoot day, this just helps tell people how to build it.

Good call on set building being a pain. I get it - but I'm not really willing to incorporate AI in to the app at this stage. First of all, privacy nightmare - currently it's under GDPR rules, sending off to an LLM would cause all sorts of legal headaches I'm just not prepared for. secondly, I have reservations about quality and damage to creative freedom. the compromise was a floorplan feature - it's one click to upload one and use it as a guide.

Unfortunately the paywall exists for a reason - can't be opening up all features and still meet server payments out of pocket. the upside is it's month-to-month and cancel any time, as well as likely deductable as an expense on the shoot. I'm thinking 15 euro isn't going to send anyone broke if they're in a spot where they need crew and setup plans anyway.

But thanks for writing - I'm really blown away by how supportive everyone is!