SB800 on a D300 not FIRING! Please HELP!

[christopher_kelly1]

I first noticed the problem right as I was taking a Cake cutting at a big

Wedding in NY. I have a SB800 connected to the D300 with sc cable,powered by a

Quantum turbo battery plus the 5th AAbattery attached to unit. Well, right as

the groom was holding the knife up to his beautiful bride's neck and the trusty

SB800 wouldn't fire! The D300 took the pictures and I captured about 4or5

frames of BLACK maybe an ambient light or two in the background - This is the

first time I felt that I knew something like this would happen one day! The fear

in the back of every Wedding Photographer's mind was coming true to me! The

flash was set to TTL BL.

[Jerry_]

The Quantum turbo battery may well have caused your SB-800 to overheat. Once the speedlight gets hot, it may (or may not) work until such a time that the unit cools down. You did have a second SB-200 to switch over to, didn't you?

 

 

 

A suggestion: have a very good knowledge of your camera settings. In the event the flash does not co-operate, a quick ISO increase may have saved the cake-knife image.

[juan_parm_nides]

What Gerald says is true. It is an overheat and you must wait until refresh.

 

And I would add, that is why a professional wedding photographer must have dual gear, as airplanes two engines, for safety. I always shoot with a friend, two independient photographic gears. It is not only safer, you can get very different images with two shooters.

 

Juan

[Damon DAmato]

>>You did have a second SB-200 to switch over to, didn't you?

 

From what Christopher described, he didn't know it didn't fire, and wouldn't have had time to switch units.

 

Sometimes the fish simply gets away.

 

Damon

[kaiyen]

The official spec is that 15 consecutive full power flashes requires 10 minutes of cool-down.

 

I have fortunately never run into this problem, but I'm really scared of it happening. 10 minutes is a long time, and if you realize it happened right, and I mean right, before a major event then there is little time to swap flashes. Unless you keep one in your pocket, I guess.

[joseph_wisniewski]

Christopher, the very best way to increase Nikon system flash reliability is to clean the the contacts (camera's hot shoe, both ends of the SC cable, and flash shoe and battery contacts) on a regular basis. Most people don't clean contacts until after a problem develops. Clean them before this time, and you have less problems. I use the same Eclipse that I use for cleaning sensors to clean contacts. Original Eclipse is a better contact cleaner than E2.

 

Which SC cable were you using? There was apparently a batch of rather unreliable SC-29 cables floating around. The problem is the camera end connector not aligning well enough to mate to the camera's hot shoe.

 

Another thing do do for reliability with any high voltage battery, remove the fifth battery and it's silly little holder from the SB-800. When using a high voltage battery pack, the fifth battery only powers the flash's control electronics, and those will run just as well on 5V (four NiMH cells) as they will on 6.25v (five cells). So, the only thing the fifth battery adds is two additional contacts (and less reliable, lower pressure than the main contacts) to fail, additional weight, and a protuberance to catch on things and make the flash harder to store.

 

And, as others suggested, respect the cool down timing requirements of the flashes. Consider a Quantum Q-Flash for increased capability.

 

And it is important for you to know that your flashes are working. There are only two ways for a photographer to not know (as Damon suggested) that a flash didn't fire. One is if the photographer only has one working eye, and the other is if the photographer is committing the grave error of not having both eyes open when shooting. While there's nothing to be done for the first case, the second case is easily corrected by learning to shoot properly.

[christopher_kelly1]

Thanks for all your help. I had no choice I had to drop another $340 for a new SB-800. After consulting with a flash expert, he suggested that it could be a couple of different factors.- That the Quantum battery that I was using kept the unit at full power and I might of taking more than Nikon's suggested 15 shots and then not letting it cool down. He mentioned that not using the diffuser might help in letting the heat escape. But the main problem is originating either with the trigger module or that the flash tube expanded from extreme heat and caused the gas to leak - which I don't really understand but that's why they call him the expert. The important thing is that the couple I was photographing at the time said that I didn't miss a moment and that they love their photos. And by the way, Thanks for the advice about having backup equipment - I had my trusty SB28 about 20feet away,but I think I would of stolen the moment to exchange it. I just compensated and told my assistant (outfitted with the T5d) to move closer to me to be the primary light source. I think if I didn't do that, the photos would of lost some of their candidness! The one I missed, with knife at the groom's neck - well that image will always be burned in my mind; and an uneasy feeling that Nikon might have to go back to the drawing board - install a vent or a mini fan or quit being so cheap and make the flash tube able to flash all day and night!

[christopher_kelly1]

SC-28 cable by the way! It's like buying a brand new never on the market car - I kinda let a year or two go by to get all the kinks out!