peter_finn

<p>Great Response from Helen of Adorama! That just moved up their reputation in my book. I will strongly consider them in my future purchase decisions.</p>

<p>The symptoms are similar to what happened to me with my D700 and both a SB600 and SB900. It started happening at the same time with both flashes so this left the hot shoe as the common denominator. The flash would also not fire intermittently when taking photos. I read online with others who had experienced the problem and had success with nikon replacing the hot shoe and others had success with carefully hammering the hot shoe very slightly to tighten up the connection between camera and flash.<br>

Now you will have to chose what you think is best but after 6 weeks of losing sleep over the thought of hammering my $2500 camera, I finally did it and my camera coupled with the flash has worked great so far. The flash is snugly connected to the hot shoe. An authorized repair center is the safest option but for me there was no local center and I would have to ship mine about 2000 miles.<br>

I used a few layers of newspaper on top of the hot shoe to protect it from metal on metal contact (hammer and hot shoe). I tapped on it lightly a few times on each side of the shoe and then mounted the flash to test the snugness. Then removed and tapped a little more and tested and so on.<br>

Luckily for me, it appears I made the right choice. Good luck to you.</p>

<p>I have successfully used the built in flash of the D700 (same ability as D300) to remotely fire both a SB900 and SB600. You can group them into the same group or even better you can put each flash into a separate group and then control the power of each flash separately. You will be able to adjust each flash power from your camera without walking up to each flash. The built in commander in the D300 works on Infrared to control the other flashes so it works good in many situations but I have less reliable results when working outdoors in the sun. You may then need to get your PW set up for those situations.<br>

There are steps to set up your D300 in commander mode. (easy)<br>

There are steps to set up your SB900 in remote mode (easy)<br>

There are different steps to set up your SB600 in remote mode (moderate)<br>

I haven't had time to look up links, I'll try later or maybe someone else will get it first.</p>

<p>I agree that the samples provided don't help us see the noise at all. 100% crops of a section of the photo with low jpeg compression would tell us more. Also, it would help if we knew the shutter speed and aperture that was used. Also, the type of lens makes a huge difference. When I started shooting with my D300 with a 2.8 lens in a indoor concert setting I was very happy with the noise compared to previous generation digital cameras.<br>

Using a monopod or tripod would allow you to use a slower shutter speed with less camera movement/blurring. This allows more light in and therefore less noise. But I'm curious as to the original shutter speed used in the examples photos.</p>

<p>I just started having the exactly same problem today on an assignment. Luckily I used a backup camera to finish the shoot. I've been using the D700 with no problems with the SB600 for over six months. I just bought an SB-900 and have been only using that on 6 shooting assignments and now these symptoms with the unpredictable strobing effect and not firing the flash when taking pictures. I was hoping that cleaning it would solve the problem but it looks like a hardware repair. I was using the SB900 in portrait mode and setting the camera down between shots to give instructions to each portrait taker. I switched back to my SB600 but it exhibited the same symptoms. Possibly, the SB-900 shorted something out. I hope someone else finds a solution aside from sending in for warranty service and losing the use of my camera.</p>