James's Light Meter Collection: Walz Color Meter
Walz Color Meter Japan
Maker: Walz
Model: Color Meter
Circa: 1958
Cell type: Selenium
Measure type: Color temperature meter
Original price: $ unknown

It's been awhile since I got a new meter. This was a surprise: very reasonably priced on eBay.

I don't know much about Walz. They were an importer of Japanese photo accessories in the late 50s. They sold a lot of color filters, so having a color-temperature meter to go with them would make sense.

Consumer-level color meters are uncommon. Gossen made the Sixticolor for years, but most color temp meters were expensive units aimed at professionals, like the Spectra TriColor.

I was surprised when this one arrived—Walz Super-Director was smaller than I'd thought, and the few times I'd seen photos of this, I thought it was similar in size to show-mount meters like the Capital clip-on. Instead, it's similar in size to a Gossen Luna Pro. It fits in my hand but fills it.

Walz Color Meter - top scale

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