D80 and SB 600 on hot shoe.

[madhu_menon]

Hi,

 

Can I use the SB-600 on the Hot shoe of D80. Is it fully compatible?

 

I heard that it can be only used as a Slave Flash? What is the disadvantage

of it being the slave flash? What is the advantage of using a commander flash?

 

What is the advantage and disadvantage of SB-600 on D80?

 

 

Thanks in Advance.

Madhu

[Jerry_]

The SB-600 and the D80 will work together. Have you checked the instruction booklet that came with your D80 body?

[andrew_dodson]

you can use it...

[Matt Laur]

It will work very well mounted to the camera.

 

It will also work very well as a slave, controlled by the D80's built-in strobe as a commander. The advantage is that you can light your subject without causing the normal head-on shadows. You can also place the strobe on a stand, using an umbreall or other reflector to greatly improve the diffuseness of the light. The disadvantage is that there is a very slight lag between commanding the shot and the actual shutter release (the commanding strobe needs a fraction of a second to tell the slave strobe what's about to happen).

 

In general, though, you'll be very happy using that camera with the SB600. Used on-camera, you can bounce the light off of the ceiling or nearby walls, and off-camera you have even more flexibility. All the more so if you spend a bit more and get the SB-800.

[richard_duncan_sr.]

I suppose this is as good of a place as any to jump in and ask....

 

Does the SB-800 use it's strobe to fire slaves (sb-600) or does it use IR? I'm getting a

D300 this weekend, and considering picking up another SB-600 along with an SB-800 and

a couple of umbrellas so I can have a portable light kit.

 

Another thing that has caused me some consternation, is what is the range of the remote

triggers/commander? Will the remotes still fire if I'm behind the umbrellas or the SB-600

is behind the subject? I had looked at the manual for the 600 that i have and in some of

the examples they show, it appears that the flash is setup behind a couch or something to

light a back wall, where it doesn't seem like there's any line of sight to the flash. I had

read some postings where people use a camera like the D80 to command remote flashes,

but end up with too much light, or their subjects blinking from the pre-flash. I guess the

question i'm getting at is will reflected light from the strobe/IR fire the remote flashes, or

does it need to be line of sight specifically?

[ShunCheung]

Nikon's CLS uses IR to control slave flashes. That is why the SU-800 (that is SU, not SB) controller, which is not a strobe/flash itself, can control slaves.

[nickwhite]

Madhu, The SB-600 is the ideal partner for your D80, on or off the camera. By using it off camera (in CLS as the slave) you can get much more directional flash with full control from the camera - the pop-up camera flash is the 'commander'.

 

Richard, As Shun says the SU-800 is the ideal commander and will also extend the CLS range over the built-in flash. Using either the built-in (pop-up) or the SB-800 as commander they will fire a pre-flash, although it is pretty much instantaneous with the main flash it can cause blinking problems for some people, the pop-up can be masked using the cheap hot shoe fitting IR panel SG-3IR which blocks the visible flash allowing the IR to pass; you could also make a similar IR filter for the SB-800.

 

CLS depends on 'line of sight' between the sensor on the gun (located by the battery compartment door, and the front of the camera (this often necessitates rotating the flash head accordingly, which the manuals do not mention) - the max range (to fire a SB-800 or SB-600) is about 10m with the pop-up/SB-800 as commander, the SU-800 doubles that range to 20m. In a reflective indoor environment you may get away with a gun behind a sofa etc (with reduced range) but you would need to experiment. Outdoors (or in a less reflective area) you definitely need 'line of sight' I find.

[richard_duncan_sr.]

Nick, thanks for the info. I wonder what the reason for putting the IR reciever on the side

of the flash is, and why not the front or back (or even a corner) was. As an aside, I

remember seeing some devices a while back that repeat IR signals from television remotes

(indescriminately-no programming required), and something like that may be a novel and

cheap way to boost the IR signal/range from the master. Has anyone else thought of

this/tried it?

 

To the original poster, sorry for the threadjack, seemed like a good place to ask, since my

curiousity was similar to your own :)

[Matt Laur]

Richard: note that you can sivel the head of the strobe both vertically and horizontally. That allows you to place the strobe remotely, with its sensor facing the source of the commanding signal, regardless of which direction the output needs to go.

[madhu_menon]

Thanks for the Response. One more question.

 

Can the SB 600 work Independently? I mean can it work without the Built in flash raised to act as commander, which means I am not lighting up the situation more than necessary just for the sake of using my pop up flash as commander on D80.

[ShunCheung]

You can directly mount the SB-600 onto the D80's (or another Nikon DSLR) hot shoe and use it that way. The pop-up flash cannot pop up (at least not all the way) when you have a flash in the hot shoe.

 

You can use the SB-800 and SB-400 directly in the hot shoe also. The only iTTL Nikon flash that has to be a slave is the SB-R200, mainly for macro and product work.

[nickwhite]

In addition to what Shun says, when using it off camera, although you do need the pop-up raised to control your SB-600 it need not contribute at all to the lighting - just set '--' in CF22, commander mode on the D80 - and all you get is the pre-flash; if that still worries you then use the SG-31R to block the visible part of the pre-flash.http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?shs=nikon+SG-31r&ci=0&sb=ps&pn=1&sq=desc&InitialSearch=yes&O=RootPage.jsp&A=search&Q=*&bhs=t

[Matt Laur]

And, while we're being picky about the details... you can also remove the unit by using a cable like the SC-29. That way the camera and flash still <i>feel</i> like they're mounted together, but you can avoid some more redeye. This is typical when the flash is mounted on a bracket, for example.