Oh man, I have used the device today that made my shooting with my DSLR so sweet and easy that I can't believe I don't hear more digital shooters clamouring for one. Went to the Festival Sundiata today (African American/African festival) in Seattle. Rented the 70-200mm 2.8 and decided to try out the Minolta Colormeter III. Oh my word, what a wonderful device. I've used dozens of exposure meters (have 2 myself), but this was the first time I've ever used a color meter and I am hooked. Now I have to figure out how the heck I can afford to buy one (they're price, probably 2-3 times more expensive than an exposure meter). Usually, I'm dealing with white cards or relying on the camera to do the white balance (one of the cool things about the EOS 1D and 1DS is that they have an external white balance sensor). That can be a pain the butt. With the color meter, I simply walk up, stick the head into the path of the light that will be going onto my subjects and hit a button. Gives me a readout in color temperature (K) or it will tell me which filter or color correction index I need to use. If I'm going to use flash, I set the meter to Non-Cord, hit the button and place it where the subjects will be, back up, hit my flash and the meter takes into consideration the ambient color temp and the flash color temp, combines them and gives me the proper K for that shooting situation. Oh how sweet. Sorry..had to get that out. Was such a cool device to play with today. :) -=>Donald

Coo...that sounds like a neat gadget :) Does using it result in better quality images, or is it simply easier to get a good quality image? Suppose that would depend on how good your eye is to start with (not that I doubt Donald's eye of course, seeing as he takes amazingly natural coloured pics already!!). Sounds like something else I'll be adding to my shopping list when I eventually upgrade to a DSLR :). Now, what was my Lotto numbers again....

That sounds like quite the meter! Also sound like quite an expense! In terms of practicality and justifying the price have you found it's made a difference in having to postwork for color? Your images have always seemed quite perfectly balanced to me..... Of course I'm a gadget freak too, but before I buy something very expensive I always have to find reasons why it's a must have before I buy it..... unless I have lots of extra dough floating around to play with.

...so, do you then take the reading off of the meter and dial it in to the 1D?

I think I should have clarified. The reason they are 2-3 times higher priced than an exposure meter is that there really aren't any cheaper color meters like there are exposure meters. I did see a few analog color meters that strictly deal with ambient light for under $100 used. For digital color meters that can measure both ambient and strobe (and both together) you're looking at $300 or so used and $500-600 new with some in the $1000 range. Misha - Yea. You can dial the K value into any digital camera that lets you set white balance by color temperature. You read 4700K on meter, dial that into camera, set to use color temperature WB and boom ... you have perfect balance. With a film camera, you set the meter for type of film (daylight, tungsten A, tungsten B) and take a reading and the meter will tell you which filter to use (like 80A, 81B) to compensate or it will give you the color compensation index # for the filter you need. Wivel - If by quality you mean sharpness and exposure, then no. But if you mean by better color, then yes. It helps you to get a truer color in your images (even with film). Yea, I'm hoping on that whole LRP (Lottery Retirement Plan) coming through too. :) 'chelle - It really is a pretty sweet device. I really do think it would be worth $300 or so to get one in my situation. The reason my images, for the most part, are correctly balanced is that I go in and balance each one by hand. There are some that are fine when I shoot them, but I also shoot a lot of mixed lighting that drives camera Auto-WB crazy. For instance, part of the event that shot today had a stage with overhead tungsten and colored lights, my external flash on a bracket and overcast daytime skylight coming from behind me. With the color meter, I was able to instantly see that the combination of all 3 was 4850-4890K. Dialed in 4900K on my camera and I'm pretty much there. Slight tweak in PS might be necessary, but probably not. Yea, I could have taken my $10 white card with me, but you can't take the card back up in the middle of the performance and take new readings as the light changes. With the color meter, I could take readings whenever I wanted to. Thinking about it, the savings in color correction time alone is worth it to me. -=>Donald

$300 isn't a bad price, actually that's pretty cheap, I was thinking the price was more in the $1500-$2000 range.... Sounds like a worthwhile investment!

$920 new at bhphotovideo

Here's an example from the situation I described earlier. Shot in triple lighting: over head tungsten (some with colored gels), external flash on bracket and overcast daylight coming through floor-to-ceiling glass windows/doors coming behind me. This is straight from the camera. In fact, it's not even the RAW converted, I simply extracted the JPEG (I set the 10D to save a small, high compression one with each RAW file). So, this is how the camera saw the scene without my input through the conversion software. Only thing I did to this in Photoshop was to rotate, resize and sharpen. No other color corrections or settings were done. -=>Donald

And for anyone who cares, the EXIF data for this shot: File: CRW_1124.jpg File size: 237KB Date/Time: 2004:02:14 14:39:47 Shutter speed: 1/200 sec Aperture: 2.8 Exposure mode: Av Flash: External E-TTL Flash EF guide number: 2047.97 Metering mode: Evaluative Drive mode: Single frame shooting ISO: 400 Lens: 70.0 to 200.0 mm Focal length: 200.0mm Subject distance: 8.6 m AF mode: One-shot AF Image size: 1536 x 1024 Rotation: none Image quality: Raw White balance: Color temp=4800K Color space: AdobeRGB Saturation: Normal Sharpness: Normal Contrast: Normal Tone: Normal Custom Functions: CFn 1: SET button function when shooting: Change quality CFn 3: Flash sync speed in Av mode: 1/200 (fixed) CFn 6: Tv/Av and exposure level: 1/3 stop CFn 11: Menu button display position: Previous CFn 13: Assist button function: Select HP (while pressing)

And it looks fabulous Donald.... although $920 is a bit steep for a new one. Still if it saves lots of time in the end, worth the money.

sounds like an interesting device. i guess you could put a $/hour rate on the work you do and work out the time you save to justify the cost :)

It'll be a tougher one to figure out cost savings than the $1800 I paid for the 10D and accessories (flash cards and plugins for Photoshop). That was easy. I was paying about $110/event for film and developing. Just 16 or so events. It was paid for in the first 9 months I had it ... even before I won the $1000 in the photo contest. This one is a little bit weirder to figure out, but I have no doubt that if not a money cost, then a sanity cost. I mean, once I get use to using it and using it often I can do color correction to all the images without opening them, then concentrate on my curves and cropping and that's it. I don't even know why I'm even acting like I'm thinking about it. I'm sold. I mean, I have to do the photography, post processing and website maintenance for my site on top of my real job. If I can save even 1 minute per photo, that's about 5-10 hours saved per event. -=>Donald

Lust. Pure lust. Donald, hate to break it to you, but the "sanity cost" argument won't fly.

Lets be honest here, I am never going to be able to use -any- "sanity" argument. :)