Professional Resources for Photographers

Speedlights are EXPENSIVE!

I get a lot of questions where people ask me what flash I recommend for them. Now I am a Nikon shooter so I will be using their speedlight models while getting my point across to you all.

The most popular choices for Nikon shooters are the SB-600 and the SB-800 / SB-900 models. If you are a Canon shooter then many or all of these bells and whistles also differ between Canon’s 430EX and 580EX speedlights.

First, let’s address the most important thing… PRICE. The SB-600 is around $200 while the latest SB-900 comes in at around $450 and up. So far so good?

Next, the SB-600 is much smaller in both size and weight (10.6 oz. to be exact). That can be nice especially if you do not have a battery grip attached to your camera or if you have a more compact D-SLR (a la the D40, D90, etc..). The SB-900 weights in at just under a pound (14.6 oz.) and it is big! It is more solid and rugged and the hot shoe is more robust.

Now for what’s under the hood. The SB-600 does have less power but not enough to be a deal breaker. Flash power is rated in what’s called a guide number. The SB-600 rates in at 98 while the SB-900 rates in at 111.5 at ISO 100.

Since the SB-600 outputs less power, you get more shots with your AA batteries than with the SB-900. It is almost a 2 to 1 difference so it is pretty considerable!

The SB-600 is an older model so it supports both new and old TTL modes (i.e. i-TTL, D-TTL and Auto TTL) while the SB-900 supports only i-TTL. No biggie here unless you have an older camera model like the D100.

So far the SB-600 seems to be kicking some butt right? Now for where the SB-900 excels.

First, the lens coverage is pretty substantial. You can zoom your SB-900 all the way up to 200mm and that means you have yourself a nice range to do some creative lighting. I know that I have used the 200mm zoom to get more reach or to give the effect of having a snoot attached. To contrast, the SB-600 can only zoom to 85mm. This isn’t a big deal if you don’t use flashes for creative lighting or off camera flash too much.

Next, the SB-900 has the ability for the flash head to turn a complete 180 degrees left and right where the SB-600 can rotate 180 to the left but only 90 degrees to the right. This can be a pain for you bounce flash shooters like me.

You also cannot hook up an external battery pack to the SB-600 while you can use the SB-8 or 9 battery pack for more oomph and faster recycling.

In wireless TTL mode, the SB-600 can only act as a remote / slave while the SB-900 can also be a master / commander flash. If you use manual mode then you can go all the way down to 1/128 power with the SB-900 while the SB-600 only goes down to 1/64 power.

Other features that are pretty nice on the SB-900 is the ability for it to receive firmware updates, has overheat protection (which you should immediately disable), adjustable light patterns and gel filter identification.

Nikon is also nice enough to include a diffusion dome, gel filters and a built-in bounce card with the SB-900.

So what is my suggestion??? Eventually get both!

Start with the SB-600 and then keep it and get the SB-900 when you get more into advanced flash techniques. Now this suggestion goes for anyone who shoots a camera other than a flagship model like the D3s. All other models have a built in flash and many of which allow for it to act as a commander flash. D3s users do not have that built-in flash so the SB-900 is really needed simply for that commander mode feature.

I wanted to go over my recent inLIGHTin Workshop for today’s Friday Night Lights segment.

I gave an inLIGHTin Workshop to about a dozen photographers over at the iPrintFromHome.com Headquarters over on Niagara Falls Blvd. For those local to Buffalo… did you know that we have an awesome photo lab right in our backyard?

So we started at 6pm and went a little over three hours! This workshop was all about lighting. We talked about everything from free and available light, to continuous light, speedlights (on and off camera) and ended up on studio strobes… There was A LOT of content and could have easily spent an entire day talking about things…

I had a great time and wanted to thank everyone for attending. I hope to see you at other workshops of mine and as always, call or email whenever if you have any questions guys!

Here are some pics from the workshop that my assistant, Martha, shot during the workshop:

Thanks to the George and Sarah over at the iPrintFromHome.com family for letting us use their space.

I can still remember my first run-in with flash photography… It was 2002 and I just picked up my first set of studio strobes. A good friend of mine gave me a crash course in how to use them and light modifiers and whatnot and then I threw myself to the wolves and booked my first sports portraits. It was for a karate school that I taught at and I basically took those in and out portraits of the little kids for mom and dad to get a bunch of wallets of them and send off to their relatives.

Granted, I wasn’t doing any Rembrandt or butterfly lighting here… It was more like lighting for a Passport photo than anything.

Long story short, I was hooked! I ran out and picked up an SB-800 speedlight the day it came out (which was in mid-2003 I believe) That was when I had my trusty Nikon D100 with me. Man I loved that camera… I might even pick another one up just because I miss it so much. Tangent. Sorry about that. So back to the lesson… Nikon has an amazing CLS system. Even back then! Their D-TTL stuff was magical and it caused me to work my butt off freelancing so I could pick up a second one! The CLS system came even further down the road and they introduced more bells and whistles which is what you see today.

With two, I was able to do all sorts of awesome flash photography. I could essentially, take my studio on-location with portability and easy set-up/take-down to get my job done better and faster… Cool.

So, I worked on it and studied lighting more and just kept experimenting. The internet was a huge help along with various DVDs and seminars that I attended. I definitely encourage learning so soak up as much information as you can so you can be all that you can be.

On that note, I hope that these next couple flash articles will help you and get you to use your flash off the camera more.

My workshops and seminars cover all the basics so for this article, I am just going to assume that you at least know the fundamentals, camera settings and lingo that I will use.

First things first, you need to think about what you are going to use as your flash settings. The two obvious choices that I can think of is whether you will want to use the camera and flash’s TTL system or if you simply want to use the flash in manual mode. There are pros and cons to using either one so let’s go over what they are:

TTL FLASH: (TTL stands for “Thru The Lens” BTW)High speed sync (or FP sync for Canon shooters)… This is some awesome stuff that is worth it’s weight in gold! (More that high speed sync stuff later) TTL is also very easy to use. Nikon shooters do have a little more luxury in this department and have the ability to easily tweak their flash output on all slave units from their camera. Canon users don’t have such a luxury and have to purchase a ST-E2 and use light ratios to get the same effect. TTL frees us up from the old days where it seemed like every photographer also needed a quantum mechanics degree as well…

Seriously with that? Well the TTL system takes care of that and calculates the proper flash output because it knows all the variables in those equations. The result it that you have your own little math geek in your flash now!
The technology does have its limitations however. For example, you will get flaky and inconsistent results if the ambient light is too bright or when commander unit is not in sight of the slave units and stuff like that. Distance from commander to slave can also be an issue. There are products out there like the RadioPoppers and PocketWizards newest product (The TT1 and TT5) that do fix these limitations. Another issue is that this stuff is proprietary so you can only have Nikon flashes with your Nikon cameras or Canon flashes with your Canon cameras… You can see that this can get expensive at $300+ a pop for their latest flashes.

Check out this video on the Mini TT1 and Flex TT5…

Here is a collage of some images that I shot with TTL Flash:

The only way I could dial down the sky enough to get the clouds to pop was by using high speed sync in TTL mode. If I wanted the same shot in manual mode, then I would have needed to invest in a couple more speedlights or brought out my studio strobes and external power pack (which also costs money).

MANUAL MODE: Good ol’ fashioned manual mode. A lot of photographers use manual mode and I do too. However, photographers such David Hobby and Zack Arias are 110% manual mode flash… Why do that if TTL is as awesome as I say it is??? Well first off, price… The only real big purchase you would make is for at least a pair of PocketWizard’s or more if you want to use more flashes. There are things known as “eBay triggers” out there which may not be the industry standard, but are 50 times cheaper than a pair of $400 PWs. Not bad! You could even get away with a long PC Sync cable and run it from your camera to your flash tethered to save some cash… Also, you aren’t limited to your specific camera brand’s flashes. You can pick up ANY flash that has a PC Sync input and hook it up to your wireless transmitter and you are good to go! If the flash doesn’t have a PC Sync input then you can always buy a hot shoe mount that has one and daisy chain it that way to work. (PC sync cable to hot shoe mount then flash mounted on hot shoe)

So you can get away with dropping a lot less for a manual flash setup… Why else does it rock? Well, TTL does all that fancy pants trigonometry stuff to do all the busy work for you with each and every shot. That means the flash output will be or can be different with each shot or composition change that you make. This could be an issue and give you inconsistent results from one to another… It’s sort of the Matrix metering system but for flashes you know? Therefore you have to ride the flash exposure compensation.

Here is an example image shot with Manual Flash:

We were in a tight space in this alley and I couldn’t rely on my lighting system to work in TTL mode. Also, it was dark enough where I didn’t need a fast shutter speed to dial down the ambient light so I hooked up my PocketWizard Plus II receivers and shot in manual mode. All I needed to do was set my flashes up once and I could spend more time shooting and less time fidgeting with my settings.

With manual flash however, you set it and forget it… Position subject at X put light stand and flash about arms length away from them at Y, dial in your settings and every shot will have the same flash output… DONE! Unfortunately, there are bad things about this setup. The most annoying issue is your camera’s stupid sync speed. The way SLRs work is that the mirror flaps up and the shutter opens for x seconds and closes and then the mirror flaps down… Many cameras have a standard sync speed of 1/200″, 1/250″ or even a 1/500″ (like on the Nikon D70s) but check your camera manual to see what yours is… It is the maximum shutter speed that you can use when shooting with a flash. Plain and simple. If you shoot at that shutter speed or slower then you are all set… Shoot faster than the sync speed and welcome to ‘blacklinesinmyphotosville’. What that nice long line is at the bottom of your picture (or left or right side if shooting portrait) is that your exposure was so fast that it didn’t give the image enough time to get the full effect of the flash because it closed up too quick.

All in all, as mentioned before, I use both methods. There is a time and place for both of them. I use TTL and high speed sync when I want to shoot portraits and want overpower the sun… That means I can dial down the ambient light and get really cool portraits that are just top notch… If I were to do that in manual mode then I would need a lot more flash power (enter studio strobes and power packs which cost $$$$) to get my shutter speed slow enough so that it falls into the sync speed of the camera….

So that gives you the rundown on what your options are as far as flash modes are concerned. The next part will discuss how to go about quickly set your gear up and dialing in your settings so you can spend more time shooting and less time fidgeting with your it all. Not a bad deal right?

*Sample images coming soon

Be sure to comment on this post and let me know how you use your flash. I know there is a lot more information on the subject. This is meant to be a nice general overview of things to get people started.

ONTO PART II (Setting up your off-camera flash in TTL mode)