sb-600 and a monolight

<p>hi, i have to say i'm new to lightings but i like it.i have a d80 and a sb-600 of which i'm very pleased.i'd like to make a "mini" studio in my basement for portraits and fashion style photos.<br>

My question is if i buy a monolight or 2,could i combine my sb-600 with those? and if yes how to do it? <br>

What monolights would you recommend? i have to say that my budget is not large..like $300...should i buy 1 or 2 ? 1 with more watts? or 2 with less watts but more angles ?<br>

oh and yes i still have like 2-3 days to return my sb-600..should i do that and buy more powerful monolights?from what i understand these are better for this style of photography.<br>

sorry for so many questions, thank you in advance for your answers ! take care</p>

<p>The only reason to use the SB-600 would be if you want to use it out in the field, away from the power (and power cords!) of those monolights. For portait and fashion work (especially the latter), you need horsepower. If that's where you want to be right now, I'd stick with the monolights. If you think you might need to go portable out in the field, or do social shooting, etc., then an SB-800 (if you can find one) would be better than the 600, since it can act as a simple slave for the monolights back in the studio - something the 600 can't natively do. An SB-900 is even better, but it's quite expensive.</p>

<p>thanks for your opinion...my question is if i can combine the sb-600 with 1-2 monolights.For 300 $ do you think i can find something ? thanks</p>

<p>Yes you can but you will need to find a way of triggering it. This could be as simple as an optical trigger unit. The power of the SB600 will likely be lower than the monolights and the recharge time could well be slower.</p>

<p>Apparently your lighting expectations are "bigger".</p>

<p>You are trying to use 2 incompatible flash systems.</p>

<p>Since you say:"i still have like 2-3 days to return my sb-600", return the SB-600 and get SB800 or SB900, if you want to go with combinations of CLS flashes, and non-compaible studio flashes.</p>

<p>Best would be to use one system for studio, and the other for portable event, travel, etc.</p>

<p>The problem with the SB-600 is that, even used in manual mode, there's no easy way to trigger it off-camera. It doesn't have an optical trigger (like the flash from a monobloc), and doesn't have a PC cord connection that will take a Pocket Wizard or other radio trigger or a sych cord. I recall seeing something on Strobist.com in the past month or two about a hot-shoe attachment (which can be used off-camera) that incorporates a PC connection. But it's probably easier to get a SB-800 or -900 (the latter is very pricey).</p>

<p>FYI, you can use the D80 built in flash as an optical trigger for monolights. You just need to put it on the manual setting. I confirmed this with Nikon since I'm about to buy some strobes, and others have done it and posted about it on the forums. You can set it so that it doesn't contribute to the exposure.</p>

<p>Also, I trigger my two SB-600s off camera with my D80 all the time. The built in flash on the D80 triggers the SB-600s. You have to set up the menus a certain way, and that info is on the net or I can post it here if you'd like. Very easy to do.</p>

<p>Devon,</p>

<p>You trigger SB600 as remote CLS flashes, commanded by D80 in CLS system<br>

What you do, perhaps Patrick does routinely in CLS, but he needs more...</p>

<p>Seems that Patrick wants to add 2 monolights to his SB600 flash and D80 camera. In this incompatible flash combination without additional equipment, Patrick must give up the Nikon CLS and trigger all flashes manually (optically or by radio). With just the D80 it cannot trigger SB600 in manual mode without external optical slave trigger, like SU-4, or generic from Wein, Vivitar, Sunpak, etc.</p>

<p>thank you all for your answers..i think the safest way to go is to use my flash for outside events and to buy 2 monlights for my "mini" studio. Thank you all for your replies. Best of luck !<br>

and also... i live in bc,canada do any of you know a way to buy some monolights, other than ebay or adorama? for the latter the transportation costs are huge and on ebay i don't know if its the best way..thanks again</p>

<p>Frank, are you sure? Nikon told me I can trigger the SB600 that way with monolights. If they're wrong, I want to know for sure since it's what I'm planning to do. Have you tried it?</p>

<p>The SB-600 <em>cannot</em> act as a simple optical slave triggered by <em>other</em> strobes like monolights. It will only slave to CLS commanders (the appropriate camera's pop-up, an SU-800, or an SB-800 or SB-900). You COULD use the SB-600 in the camera's hot shoe, and set it to manual (so that it emits no metering pulses pre-exposure), and allow it to be what triggers the optically slaved monolights. But that (unless you use a TTL-grade hot-shoe cable from Nikon) means that the SB-600 would be doing only fill duty from the camera position.</p>

<p>Devon,<br>

Matt already answered your question... perhaps Nikon did not understand your question? <br>

It is not nice to suspect that "Nikon did not know", but they usually have "positive" attitude, and rather would say YES, even if sometimes the answer could be No or Maybe.<br>

Perhaps a longer explanation was in oder, and they did not bother to elaborate, since eventually you would come up with a solution...even if you have to purchase some extra equipment, like optical trigger slave or radio trigger. SB800 has builtin optical slave trigger that is part of SU-4. I call SU-4 an optical trigger, but it is much more than that...</p>

<p>Patrick,<br>

To do what you want, you'd need devices like these<br>

<a href="http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/95414-REG/General_Brand_SF941_PC_to_Hot_Shoe.html">http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/95414-REG/General_Brand_SF941_PC_to_Hot_Shoe.html</a><br>

<a href="http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/89982-REG/Hama_HA_6952_Hot_Shoe_Adapter_2.html">http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/89982-REG/Hama_HA_6952_Hot_Shoe_Adapter_2.html</a><br>

<a href="http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/89977-REG/Hama_HA_6950_Universal_Flash_Adapter.html">http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/89977-REG/Hama_HA_6950_Universal_Flash_Adapter.html</a><br>

But you will need to meter your subjects. You can also try using monolights with built-in eye and see if you like the exposure and maybe even turning sb600 behind you so it'll act only to set the big-guys of.<br>

But in anycase if you aren't planning on using flash to set of your monolight, you'll need either one of those adapters to hardwire to the monolight or a radio/transmiter something like this <a href="http://www.adorama.com/QTRS4IF.html?searchinfo=wireless+flash">http://www.adorama.com/QTRS4IF.html?searchinfo=wireless+flash</a> . Some radios come with hotsync adapters and with others you'd still need the hot-shoe adapter.<br>

Welcome to the wonderful world of studio photography. It is fun :)<br>

Adam</p>