Research
Why twelve shots
We tested limits from six to unlimited across four hundred films. The number matters more than we expected, and it is not a round one.
The first version of Capsule had no limit. You could shoot as much as you liked and it all went into the film. It was worse in a way that took us a while to name.
Unlimited films came back enormous and boring. Four hundred frames, of which maybe eleven were worth looking at, and the eleven were buried. Nobody scrolled to the end of their own night.
What the numbers did
At six shots people got anxious and hoarded them; a third of guests finished the night with unspent shots and were annoyed about it. At unlimited, median keeper rate fell off a cliff. Twelve sat in the place where people shot deliberately and still felt free.
- Six shots — 34% of guests never spent them all. Too precious.
- Twelve shots — highest rate of photos guests later downloaded individually.
- Thirty-six shots — good for weekends, too loose for a single evening.
- Unlimited — twice the volume, half the keepers, nobody finished the roll.
Twelve is also the number of exposures on the cheapest film you could buy, which is either a coincidence or a hundred years of people quietly working this out before us.
You can change it. The default is twelve because the default should be the answer.