Anyone using colour temperature meters to set their colour balance "in-camera"?

I use a Minolta color meter II to fine tune color balance on some projects. I believe the less you have to mess with colour grading in post the better, especially if you're going for a 'purist' landscape look.

Colour is so subjective to each photographer that the ability to adjust in post is a given - but not always necessary.

I've used the expodisc for jpg timelapse and hdslr video projects myself. I had no idea there was an external meter of sorts??

Colour temperature meters were (are) used in the 'old days' to evaluate precise colour temperatures especially when shooting transparencies/slides.

The exposure and colour latitudes were limited with transparency film and you had to get it right with exposure bracketing and colour-correcting filter manipulation.

As stated before, colour perception is very subjective but using a colour temp meter allows you to get damn close to the actual colour of the location or object of interest.

Matt, are you shooting RAW files or jpegs?

I can see that colour temp is very important when shooting jpegs but RAW files have colour temp defined during conversion to Jpeg/Tiffs and the colour temp recorded by the camera at the time of the exposure is kind of irrelevant, although it is set as the 'shot as' colour temp in the RAW file itself. Not sure how AE and similar software uses that info or what the consequences are of having to alter it though.

I mainly shoot stills and only shoot RAW files so colour temp is irrelevant aside from colour temp discrepancies in lighting sources. I have the same meter, Minolta Colour Meter II, and I stopped using it when I stopped shooting film.

JJ

I use it mainly when working with jpeg and especially shooting in video mode as I personally like to do as much as I can 'in-camera'.

As you are familiar with C/T meters, you will appreciate their facility, because doing colour grading in post on already compressed material can cause unwanted artifacts and can take a lot of time to get it right.