I'm from Malaysia. I need to buy either one of these color meters. I need a reliable meters . Any experience please advise. Thanks

-- Norhisham Abu (hesham@first.net.my), January 29, 2001

Answers

I have only used the Minolta and have never had ANY problems. You can go to www.calumet.com or www.wbhunt.com and get some good prices and usually very good service. Cheers

-- Scott Walton (scotlynn@shore.net), January 29, 2001.

the industry standard, at least in ny, is the minolta IIIF. i've never seen another used (except the old II). it is an excellent meter. if you don't need the latest model and don't want to spend nearly $1000, there are plenty of used minolta II's on the market and i never had a problem with that model (the IIIF is better for flash, especially mixed flash/ambient).

-- adam friedberg (asfberg@hotmail.com), January 29, 2001.

MINOLTA IIIF COLOR TEMPERATURE METER.

It is just terrific, very accurate and esy to read. I actually did buy mine used. before that I had a Minolta Color II meter that was stolen in a burglary. If you are going to be using flash get the IIIF, the old flash module for the II was designed to be used with flash only up to 250 w/s.

-- Ellis Vener (evphoto@insync.net), January 29, 2001.

Just an off-the-wall idea (a bit futuristic)...

If your going to be using the color meter in places where you'd always have a computer (notebook) available, you could use one of the newer hand held mouse-like spectrophotometers (e.g. Spectrocam) which are commonly used in the process of building ICC color profiles for computer gear. I'd guess a spectrophotometer should be able to provide interesting information regarding discontinuous spectrum light sources where color temp meters provide less than exact information, as well as be useful for reading the colors of objects your trying to photograph (e.g. for catalog shoots where color matching is important). A number of pro photographers around here are shooting digital on location with high-end backs, and typically do bring a computer to the shoot so the premise isn't so far fetched.

For portability, I'd like to see the next generation Specrocam as USB based, and have some PalmOS software available so you could use the spectrophotometer off a Handspring Visor or other PalmOS USB based hand held.

-- Larry Huppert (Larry.Huppert@mail.com), January 29, 2001.