Colour temperature meter

[agro]

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I would be grateful to know whether any M8 owner uses a separate colour temperature meter (like Gossen) and whether it is worth investing in one.

Many thanks,

Agro

 

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[phlogiston1]

I don't have an M8 but I do own several Digital cameras and still use my R8. I have a Gossen Mastersix and a colour metre. I hardly ever use it. I wouldn't bother with one. White balance from Raw is just so good.

[marknorton]

White Balance from RAW is fine if you have a white reference to balance off and are prepared to fix it for every image you take.

 

It may be heresy, but I don't subscribe to the idea that every image you ever take has to be processed using C1 and therefore look for M8 JPEG to do the same decent - if not perfect - job I get from my Nikon D2X.

 

Right now, the in-camera WB is poor, especially AWB and especially under artificial light and I bought a Gossen ColorMaster 3F meter a few weeks ago and by dialling in the colour temperature, I'm getting results consistent with what my D2X gives me.

 

So, in answer to your question, I find it useful and also quite instructive - it's interesting how much the colour temperature changes during a day's shooting. That said, I am not a professional and a pretty incompetent picture maker by the standards of many on this forum!

[agro]

Thank you Mark,

My thoughts exactly.

I am currently using D200 (awaiting M8) and find myself taking a few shots with different manually set WB values to see what's most natural given the time of day.

The sunlight "down-under" is so harsh that I wish I had a temperature meter.

 

Cheers,

Agro

[scott kirkpatrick]

I bought a Gossen ColorMaster 3F meter a few weeks ago and by dialling in the colour temperature, I'm getting results consistent with what my D2X gives me.

 

So, in answer to your question, I find it useful and also quite instructive - it's interesting how much the colour temperature changes during a day's shooting.

 

I'm a little surprised by this. I think of color temperatures as highly approximate figures that both camera makers and raw file developer take great liberties with. Shifts in one direction or the other make sense, but I haven't seen the absolute value to be reliable. Most of my experience is with the Olympus E-1 and C1/RSP. Olympus hides its idea of color temperature deep in the EXIF's maker notes, so the software makes wild-assed guesses at it. Different packages (C1, RSP, ACR) make different WAGs and get different results. The images match with different stated temperatures in the different programs. Maybe Leica did it right, but I would be surprised.

 

scott

[george +]

I tend to agree with you that RAW images - great fun as they are - are an overkill for most of MY shots.

 

Auto WB as we all know does not yet work too well. Specific light settings are better.

 

What works very well for my JPEGS is the manual WB setting. Just point at a white surface, click - and your white balance is set for the session.

 

Try it, you might even like it.

[marknorton]

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This meter is really intended for film use; you specify the colour sensitivity of the film you are using; it measures the colour temperature in degrees K and tells you the type of colour compensating filters - magenta or green - required to compensate.

 

For film, this process is necessarily subtractive but applied to a digital camera, the software can make the required adjustment either way to match some arbitrary reference point and I guess that when you select a WB preset or dial in a value, you are specifying the adjustments to be made.

 

With AWB, the camera has to figure out the colour temperature itself and it's not clear to me how the M8 does this - the Gossen has three photodiodes behind RGB filters to do the measurement, my Nikon has a separate WB sensor and I had hoped the blue dot was going to do the same but as it's turned out, it's only used to set the viewfinder LED brightness. However it's meant to work, it isn't, at least not in artificial lightt and there's lots of (unfiltered) IR about.

[marknorton]

George - I haven't had much success with the manual WB, it was still way off in incandescent though it seemed to work under daylight.

[Guest smep_reloaded]

For me it´s o.k. to use a colour temperature meter for studio shootings, but it will kill any spontaneous work with the m8.

 

It should be o.k. to use "daylight" for shooting outside and "tungsten" inside and do little corrections to the dng if needed.

 

if hcb would have had to think about white balance he had missed 95% of his shoots.

[terrycioni]

George - I haven't had much success with the manual WB, it was still way off in incandescent though it seemed to work under daylight.

Mark,

 

I have found that the M8 manual white balance works well. I sold my Minolta Color Meter several years back, and have wondered about testing the M8 manual wb against the color meter - to late for that for sure, but you have a color meter and an M8.

 

Typically I use a white card to set the M8 manual white balance (I keep a small card in the bag). No excuse, the M8 auto white balance is poorly implemented - but most pro jpeg shooters I know - using other brand cameras - will often manual wb in tough lightening situations.

 

I did notice in the early days of digital you pretty much had to use a color meter, and that incandescent lighting in a given room will vary quite a bit color temperature wise. I know the local major league (NHL) hockey arena lighting varies substantially across the rink, new bulbs verses old bulbs, etc, etc.

 

Cheers. Terry.

[marknorton]

I agree it's not good to even think of using it all the time, I bought it to learn more and to understand what works with the M8 and what doesn't. Tungsten on the M8 is bad news, but part of that is down to the IR.

 

I doubt there's huge demand for these meters - ths was new-old stock and priced accordingly - especially with the ability to correct WB in raw processing. I still think that the AWB in the M8 should be better than the pony function it is.