Support

Almost certainly not — check what you've asked for. Freezing the wings of a small, fast bird genuinely does require speeds beyond most cameras. Switch Freeze to Body, or set a less strict sharpness target in Gear Setup, and the figure will drop sharply. Print is the forgiving target; 1px sharp is the punishing one.

That's the app hitting its ceiling rather than quoting a fantasy. 1/32000s is the fastest speed any current camera realistically offers, so anything beyond it gets clamped and flagged — hummingbirds do it, and so does demanding frozen wings from a static camera pointed at small, erratic birds. It's telling you the shot as specified isn't available: time the peak of the wingbeat, accept some wing blur, or let the bird sit smaller in the frame.

Panning cancels the bird's body movement across your frame. It does nothing about the wings flapping up and down relative to that body. If you've asked to freeze the wings, panning helps less than you'd expect — and if the result is already capped at the practical limit, it may not move at all.

You've probably hit the handhold floor. Below a certain speed, your hands blur the frame regardless of what the bird is doing. The app raises the figure to your stability limit and shows an info marker when it does. A tripod, or switching Support to Tripod if you're already on one, is what fixes that — a faster shutter isn't the issue.

The physical width of one pixel on your sensor, in micrometres. Smaller pixels resolve motion blur sooner, so a high-resolution body needs slightly more shutter speed for the same apparent sharpness. The app derives it from your sensor format and megapixel count — you never have to look it up.

It does not need to be. Wingbeat only needs your sensor format (full frame, APS-C or Micro Four Thirds) and resolution in megapixels — both are in your camera manual or on the manufacturer's spec page. Those two figures determine everything the app needs to know about your sensor.

The long end you actually shoot birds at. For a 100–500 mm, enter 500. The focal length only affects your handhold floor, so entering the longest setting keeps you safe across the range.

Leave it on if your camera has it and you are comfortable with the trade-off. It unlocks speeds past 1/8000s, at the risk of rolling shutter distorting fast wingbeats on non-stacked sensors. Switch it off and the app caps recommendations at 1/8000s and tells you when it has done so.

No. It contains no networking code at all. Everything is calculated on your device, which is the point — it works in places your phone has no signal.

£4.99 (or your region's equivalent, about $4.99), paid once. No subscription, no in-app purchases, no ads, and updates are included — an offline calculator has no running costs to pass on, so it doesn't pretend otherwise.

Soon — the app is in final testing for the App Store. Drop your address in the notify form and you'll get exactly one email, on launch day. No drip campaign; the list is deleted once that email goes out.

Not currently. Wingbeat is iOS only. If that changes it will be announced on this site.

Yes — everything from the first-run walkthrough lives behind the gear icon in the bottom right of the main screen, and you can change any of it at any time.

Delete the app. All Wingbeat stores is your gear setup, held in your device's own app storage, and removing the app removes it. There is nothing held anywhere else.