SmartPrep: Free Camera Prep Sheets

better together

SmartPrep and SmartLog are a pair

SmartPrep is the prep day. SmartLog is the shoot day. Finish your prep, tap Hand off to SmartLog, and SmartPrep writes a file that SmartLog imports in one step: production, every camera letter with its body, format and codec, the lens set and the filter kit all land already configured. You walk on set the next morning and the first take is ready to log.

Both apps are free, both work with no signal, and neither ever sees your data. If you already use SmartLog, SmartPrep will feel like home in about a minute.

And when it wraps, tap Hand off to SmartWrap: SmartWrap turns everything you checked in here into the returns list, keeps each line with the house it came from, and expects back only what is still out.

new · the end of typing kit lists

Import your rental order

The rental house already wrote your kit list. Paste it straight from the email, drop in the quote PDF or a spreadsheet, or just photograph the printed order taped to the cart. SmartPrep reads it on your device, sorts every line into the right category, expands a lens set into its focals, and offers to set up the camera package it found. Nothing you paste or photograph is ever uploaded, and nothing lands in the kit until you approve it on the review screen.

YOUR PHONE IS THE SCANNER: PHOTOGRAPH THE PRINTED ORDER AND THE KIT LIST BUILDS ITSELF

At the rental-house counter or down on the floor with the cases open, it is the same move: one photo of the printed order and the kit list builds itself.

FOUR WAYS IN: PASTE, PDF, SPREADSHEET, PHOTO

EVERY LINE CHECKED BEFORE IT LANDS

ONE IMPORT, THE WHOLE KIT, SORTED

FROM THE PAPERWORK AT THE COUNTER…

…TO A KIT LIST IN YOUR POCKET AT THE VAN

help shape it

SmartLog became what it is because working ACs, DPs and sound recordists told us what was missing, and most requests shipped within days. SmartPrep starts the same way. If you prep cameras for a living and something on this page is not how you would do it, we genuinely want to hear it.

from the makers of the digital slate

SmartPrep is built by 3D Film Parts, the team behind the 3D-printed Digital Slate and SmartLog. All of it free, all of it built with the people who use it.

what's new

Build 2026-08-18MAJOR UPDATE

SmartPrep has always been able to say what arrived. This build is about whether the camera department is actually ready to shoot, and about SmartLog never asking you for something you already typed here.

Ready for set

• A final check before the package leaves prep. One screen that answers the only question that matters at the end of a prep day: what is still unresolved. It counts the kit that has not been checked in, the missing and damaged gear, substitutions, duplicate serial numbers, short deliveries, unanswered prep checks, camera settings that disagree, firmware out of step, and whether the cards and batteries that turned up actually cover what the job needs. Every line is tappable and takes you straight to the thing it is talking about.
• It informs, it never blocks. There is no state where SmartPrep refuses to hand the job over. It says "3 things to review" and lets you carry on, because the person holding the kit list knows things the app does not.
• It is a step of the workflow now, so the stepper on the home screen and the next-step bars lead you to it rather than leaving it to be discovered.

Camera match

• Compare every camera side by side before you leave. Body, serial, firmware, recording mode, format, codec, frame rate, shutter, ISO, white balance, tint, LUT, timecode rate and timecode source, laid out as a table with one column per camera. The classic mistake this catches is the one nobody notices until the grade: A camera on show LUT v4 and B camera still on v3.
• Cameras are not required to be identical. A crash camera is supposed to differ, and an app that calls that an error trains people to ignore it. Mark a difference as expected, write down why, and it stops counting against you while staying visible on the table.
• Serial numbers are never a mismatch. Two bodies are supposed to have different serials. Two bodies sharing one is the fault, and that is caught separately.

Shoot defaults, and a handoff that carries them

• Record what each camera is actually set to. Firmware, recording mode, frame rate, shutter, ISO, white balance, tint, LUT, timecode rate and source, the starting roll, card and clip, and a note per camera. All optional, all tucked behind one disclosure so the camera card stays short, with a one line summary you can read by flicking between the camera tabs.
• Copy settings from camera A for a multi camera job, then edit only the differences. It copies the technical defaults and deliberately never copies the serial.
• SmartLog receives all of it. The handoff now carries the frame rate, shutter, LUT and starting roll straight into SmartLog's own production setup, plus every camera's serial, firmware, recording mode, timecode and starting state. If it was decided at prep, nobody types it again on the shoot day.
• Registered lenses become SmartLog's lens records. Serial, close focus, front diameter, T stop range and squeeze arrive as real lens records on the shoot day, so a take can say which 35 it was shot on and VFX get the serial without anyone retyping it.
• See exactly what is being sent before you send it. The handoff opens a preview listing everything the file carries and everything that is not configured yet. The preview is generated from the actual outgoing file rather than a separate checklist, so it cannot promise something the file does not contain.
• An older copy of SmartLog still reads the file. Everything new is additive: a job that uses none of these features produces exactly the handoff it always did.

Lens records

• One record per physical lens: manufacturer, series, focal length, serial, lens number, T stop range, close focus, front diameter, squeeze, type, metadata system, existing damage, notes and a prep status.
• Build them from the kit in one tap. One record per lens you actually hired, and the front diameter is filled in for you from the set: SmartPrep has quietly known the mount and front diameter of thirty rental sets for weeks and nothing had ever read them.
• Take the serials from the order. If the rental paperwork already listed serial numbers, SmartPrep lifts them onto the matching lens by focal length rather than making you type them a second time. It only ever fills a blank, so nothing you typed is overwritten.

Did it turn up

• The calculator says how much the job needs. This says whether that much arrived. Required against ordered against received, for media and for power, counted off the kit list.
• Short by two cards is a warning. Two spare cards is not a problem. A surplus is never treated as a fault.
• It shows which lines it counted, because a number nobody can check is worse than no number: a media line can be a card reader, and only the person holding the list can tell.
• Add the shortfall to the kit list in one tap, as a clearly marked line, never as a silent edit to somebody else's rental quantities.

Substitutions that lead somewhere

• Substituted is no longer a dead end. Record what actually turned up, its serial, why it was swapped, and whether the substitute is the equipment that will really shoot.
• What was ordered is never overwritten. The prep sheet prints both, side by side, so the swap is on record rather than argued about at the return counter.
• If a substituted body arrived and no camera is set up as it, SmartPrep says so and offers to switch that camera over in one tap. It offers rather than assumes, because it cannot know which letter you meant.

Firmware

• Two of the same thing should be running the same version. SmartPrep does not need to know which version is newest to tell you that your two transmitters disagree. Enter firmware on the camera cards or on any kit line.
• Groups build themselves. The camera bodies are a group, two lines with the same name are a group, and the individually tracked units inside one line are a group. Nothing to set up, and a group of one never appears.
• A deliberate difference can be accepted and stops being raised.

Smaller things that add up

• Duplicate serial numbers are flagged across camera bodies, kit lines, the units inside a line and the lens records. A body and its own kit line sharing a serial is the same camera correctly cross referenced, not a duplicate, and is not flagged.
• Pin a note to the pre-flight. The one thing on the job somebody actually has to remember rides to the top instead of living on a kit line nobody opens again.
• Prep notes per camera, for the small facts that matter on the day.
• Job cards say when they last changed, which matters when a job is passed around or picked up days later.
• Section headings and field labels carry icons, and the icon set is now shared with SmartLog so the two apps read as one family of tools.

On the prep sheet itself

• The document the rental house receives carries all of it. A camera setup block saying how each camera was configured, a lens record table with the serials and the marks already on the glass, a substitutions table showing ordered against supplied, and any firmware out of step.
• A sheet for a job that uses none of this prints exactly as it always did, checked byte for byte against the previous build.
• All of it in English and Spanish, on screen and on paper.

Build 2026-08-10

• Five more cameras answer the cards and batteries question with real figures: Canon EOS C400, EOS C80 and EOS C300 Mark III, Sony FX6 and the DJI Osmo Pocket 4P. That is 106 recording modes across 18 bodies now, every one read off the manufacturer's own published table. Two of them taught the calculator something: Canon's C300 Mark III records RAW at 1 Gbps at both 25p and 50p, so its rate does not double with the frame rate, and Sony's XAVC runs on a ladder where 25p is faster than 29.97p. Rates that do not scale are now stored as the ladders they are, instead of being multiplied and quietly wrong.
• The card picker knows what your camera takes. Real capacities up to 4TB, and it starts on a card that suits the body: a 2TB drive on an ALEXA 35, 128GB on an Osmo Pocket, 1TB on a Mavic. Picking a drone used to open the list on Sony cine media, which helped nobody.
• Feature film joins the record time presets. It was the one job the list did not have.
• The DJI Osmo Pocket 4P is in the camera database, so it goes on the kit list by name.
• The build number sits at the top of Settings with a link to this page, so you can see at a glance whether you are on the current build.
• Fixed: on a phone, the note above the cards result wrapped down the left half of the card with empty space beside it and pushed everything below off the screen.

Build 2026-08-07

• Sheets fit the phone at bigger text sizes. The item sheet could render taller than the screen, with its top row hidden above the display edge and nothing to grab. Fixed at the root for every text size, and fields now scroll clear of the on-screen keyboard instead of hiding under it. Same fix as SmartLog's take form, shipped across the family.
• New Device setting. Auto detects phone, tablet or computer, and Settings can override it when a device behaves like the wrong one: the choice sets the text size and whether the prep sheet prints or saves as PDF.
• iPads get the PDF button. Modern iPads report themselves as desktop computers, so the sheet used to route them to the print dialog. They read as tablets now and save a real PDF, the same fix SmartLog shipped for its reports.

Older updates (tap a build to read it):