Colour Temp Meter

[whiteflyer]

After going through some of my snow photos, I've been looking at colour temp meters, but the only ones I can find are in $1000 (£600) range which is far too much for me, does anyone know of a cheaper option.

 

[Knikki]

Is your snow not coming out white?

Cheaper way is either a Warmup filters range from 81A to 81EF which is near orange

Or bracket your exposure by adding anything from +0.5 to +2.0 on your exposure compensation dial basically over exposing think you may also be able to to do it if your have shot in RAW and do it the RAW Editor.

 

[whiteflyer]

I have shot RAW and over exposed by +1 , but I don't want one just for snow, I wondered if there was a cheapish way to get a colour temp reading in kelvin for more accuracy than just using my expodisc to set the white balance.

 

[Knikki]

HMM!! With out doing loads of searching on Google etc I think the answer is no

Colour Temp Meters were used in the film/cine days a lot to do as you want, find out the corresponding filter factor to make film colour balance.

And yes they are expensive.

I think the only other way is to keep an eye on flea bay and look out of the Minolta Colour Meter but I have no idea what price these things fetch.

However the reason snow will come out grey is simply because the white snow will reflect loads more light back into the camera, so causing the camera to 'under-expose'.

Good luck in your search

 

[whiteflyer]

They look to be going for around £100 on ebay

 

[HoppyUK]

TBH a colour temperature meter has no real use in digital photography - they're for film. They are expensive and hard to use with any accuracy, and there are far easier ways of getting the right result, eg custom white balance, or adjustment in post processing.

 

[whiteflyer]

TBH a colour temperature meter has no real use in digital photography - they're for film. They are expensive and hard to use with any accuracy, and there are far easier ways of getting the right result, eg custom white balance, or adjustment in post processing.

I was think it would be more accurate to be honest, get a kelvin temp reading from the meter, shoot in raw and then using DPP adjust the white blalance (if I think it's out) to the same kelvin number as meter gave.

 

[HoppyUK]

I was think it would be more accurate to be honest, get a kelvin temp reading from the meter, shoot in raw and then using DPP adjust the white blalance (if I think it's out) to the same kelvin number as meter gave.

I think it's easier to do a custom white balance, or pop an 18% grey card in the corner of a quick test frame and use that as a reference for the dropper in Raw processing, eg Kodak card for about £15.