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Hi,

Well i've been thinking about wireless flash and how it all works etc, at a recent wedding i saw i canon user using what looked something like a sb800 and he had it wirelessly hooked up with his camera in a soft box on a stand. after seeing his images i am amazed as to how gorgeous the lighting turned out. Now i am currently wanting to learn more about what wireless systems are worth looking at down track (not in position now though... ). And also a little more on softboxes.

i am still learning about my flash at the moment, the sb800, i find practice is helping me get better all the time, but in the future i would love to extend my kit to contain a wireless system and a soft box to diffuse the flash a bit more then the attachable flash diffuser. So if you have any advice or comments i would love to hear it, i find its such an interesting area----lighting that is----- and would love to learn so much more about it.

thanks for checking this out and i hope to get some responses from the forum!! thanks folks!

It is great to hear that you are constantly learning and asking about things. I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a off camera flash fanatic, but I do dapple with using my SB-800 and SB-600 off camera here and there.

There are essentially two methods that you can use to move one (or more) of these flashes off the camera. The first method requires a bit more money to be spent...that is with radio triggers. Phottix makes a number of good quality, inexpensive radio flash triggers (Tetra, Aster, and the upcoming Atlas and Stratos), these will allow you to trigger a flash off camera anywhere within 30-100m (depending on what you buy...). The second method is by using Nikon's onboard, infra red, CLS (Creative Lighting System). Although this is free (and on your D200, the pop up flash can act as a commander) you are limited by range (I have found reliability falls off greatly when you have your flash more than 6-8m away) and you are stuck with line of sight connection (ie the flashes have to be infront of you). However, CLS has it's redeeming features: high speed flash sync (you can use CLS to sync at up to 1/8000sec as we discovered recently), you can use TTL (if you wish) and it costs nothing more to you.

I hope this helps!

thanks....yeah definately, i had no idea my camera could do all that, so it gives me something to play with for sure, and i will have google at those wireless systems you mentioned. thanks.

I think Cameron has explained the triggering systems very well. For me, I started off using wireless triggers and non-Nikon flashes so I worked in manual mode, although recently, with experimentations of a SB-600 and SB-800 I was quite pleased by the "auto" TTL system (which will no doubt, be of very good assistance to someone just starting out with OCF), although that is dependent on line of sight and distance.

In terms of softbox combination with a flash, I found that it is an incredibly well diffused directional light. However, with that being said, the diffusion is due to the reflective panels inside, which if you don't have a diffusion cap on your flash, the light basically "shoots through" the white panel and doesn't bounce off the interiors and is no different to an umbrella (minus the very minor light spillage from reflecting, which I have problems with in confined spaces). With that being said however, there are other lighting modifiers that do similar functions to softboxes, such as umbrellas themselves (in shoot through and reflective variants) which are more portable.

Just because I am a jealous Canon user, I might suggest the SU-800?

Can someone with the SU-800 comment on whether it's worth having on this setup?

Try the CLS first though to see whether you like that first. Some people find the 'automatic' lighting more intuitive.

If you want radio triggers, get the 2.4 Ghz ones. Their range is insane. So is their build quality. Apparently China can make quality stuff.... You will forego CLS though.
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/RF-602-Trigger-Canon-50D-40D-30D-7D-5D-1Ds-2-Receiver-/180425120321?cmd=ViewItem&pt=AU_Cameras_Photographic_Accessories&hash=item2a022cda41#ht_7191wt_1030

I use the Nikon CLS system & find it quite brilliant.
The D200 will work as a master, but I find it awkward to change settings quickly. I prefer to use the SB900 for master as it has a superb control system. It also gives greater range.
The SU800 has an excellent reputation, but I have always been put off by the odd batteries it uses (i.e. not AA)

I have 1xSB900 and 2xSB800. If I need three OCFs then I either use the on board as master, or use the SB900 on a cable. I daisychain a couple of SC28s to get a decent distance from the camera.

If you look at the radio triggers, you will get much greater range, but will lose the TTL capability. The upside of this though is that you can use much cheaper flashes than the Nikon ones. Even studio flash. With Pocket Wizards, the "rolls Royce" of these things, you get several hundred metres range. Not sure why you would want that though. There are some new ones coming on stream that will preserve full functionality of the flashes, including TTL, but AFAIK these are not available here. Something to do with government radio spectrum regulations.

surenj wrote:Just because I am a jealous Canon user, I might suggest the SU-800?

Can someone with the SU-800 comment on whether it's worth having on this setup?

Try the CLS first though to see whether you like that first. Some people find the 'automatic' lighting more intuitive.

If you want radio triggers, get the 2.4 Ghz ones. Their range is insane. So is their build quality. Apparently China can make quality stuff.... You will forego CLS though.
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/RF-602-Trigger-Canon-50D-40D-30D-7D-5D-1Ds-2-Receiver-/180425120321?cmd=ViewItem&pt=AU_Cameras_Photographic_Accessories&hash=item2a022cda41#ht_7191wt_1030

From my understanding, the SU-800 is a SB-800 without the flash abilities...it lets you control 3 groups (compared to the 2 groups that your pop up allows). As for the 2.4Ghz triggers...2.4Ghz is a frequency that is used by a few other common RF items.... (cordless phones, WiFi, Bluetooth, microwave ovens.....) Pocket Wizards (the industry standard) actually run on 433Mhz band in Australia/Europe (340Mhz - USA, 315Mhz - Japan) so does 2.4Ghz really give you range?

i love the fact that we can ask questions or if we need advice that this forum is able to help always. So thanks for your comments, interesting hearing everyone discuss the topic. I will have a fiddle with the camera and flash today to see what i can figure out. 2 out of the 3 kids are out of the house today so it gives me some free to time to practice!!

thanks again, and if anyone has anymore to add feel free.....always in need of more info!!