SU 800 or Pocket Wizard

[Spott]

My present skill & equipment level in the studio are such that I have 2 soft boxes set as my key & fill to camera L&R. I use two Nikon speed-lights as background lights. The soft boxes are triggered by optical slaves on the flashhead. The speed-lights are triggered wirelessly by a Master SB900 on the D300.

The light from the SB900 that triggers the speed-lights registers with the softbox sensors & triggers them too early. The resulting image shows the light from the two remote speed-lights, but no light from the soft boxes. This problem is intermittent depending on camera position relevant to the softbox senors.

For the sake of consist ant & repeatable results I need advice on which solution to pursue.


1. Purchase a SU800 wireless commander to trigger the remote speed-lights without using light that would trigger the soft boxes.

2. Purchase a Pocket Wizard (or similar) to trigger the soft boxes without depending on a optical slave. Then continue to use the SB900 to trigger the remote speed-lights.

3. Something else that escapes my technical knowledge at present.

[ian408]

Where do you use the flashes? If it's only in the studio, my suggestion is to look at your setup and see if there's something you can do, like move the flash out of the softbox a bit more so that the optical trigger works as it should.

If you do need to go to the wireless route; consider Radio Poppers or something else that preserves the ttl capability of the flash unit.

[pathfinder]

Is it the pre-flash that is triggering your optical slaves? If so I think there is a command buried in the Nikon set up on the camera flash control that turns off the pre flash for manual mode shooting, but one of the Nikonians will have to verify this comment as I am not certain.

Do you want, need iTTL in the studio?

If you do, you need to shoot in CLS mode and need a master flash like your SB 900 and your remote controlled speedlites.

Your optical triggered softboxes may be being triggered by the pre flash from your master SB900. Could you set up your optical slaves on a pc cord and shield them from the master flash, and let them be triggered by your slave flash firing perhaps? There are some optical slaves that are supposed to detect the pre flash and ignore it also - B&H has them I believe.


If you do not need iTTL, and just want to shoot manual mode flash, then you can use a pc cord, or optical slaves, or radio transmitters of some kind.

The industry standard is usually thought to be the basic Pocket Wizards - not cheap, but dead reliable like a hard wire. I hated buying mine, but I have never regretted it, and I cannot remember loosing a frame to a PW connection failure. I cannot say the same for eTTL or Canon's version of IR wireless control which I actually like quite a bit indoors.


As I said in another post recently, my decision whether to shoot manual flash or iTTL/eTTL depends on whether I can tell a subject to stand in a certain spot and they will stay there. If the flash to subject distance does not vary, then the exposure is always the same and you can just dial the exposure into your camera and bang away in manual mode.

If you are chasing kids around a room shooting candids ( and I do some of that from time to time ) the advantages if iTTL that will adjust your flash exposure in real time while the shutter is still open, quickly becomes quite apparent. For that kind of shooting, iTTL lets you concentrate on framing and composing, and lets the flash modulate the light output as needed as the flash to subject distance varies.

[ShepsMom]

When i use CLS i set camera on a commander mode to trigger both flashes. I don't know if that will make any difference, because i have not tried using flash as a commander. I hope you'll figure it out successfully!

[Qarik]

I am a little confused on your setup. You say you are using nikon speed lights and "softboxes". What is the light sources for the softboxes? what brand?

If these "softboxes" are simply triggered optically..then you can set have your commander set to "--" and that reduces the the visible light portion of the preflash though a small flash still occurs.

The SU800 may work but it may still flash a bit..perhaps enough to trigger the softboxes early..surest setup would be to radio triggers on the speed light and when they go off they should trigger the the softboxes.

[JohnBiggs]

The Alienbees cybersyncs are a great setup and cheap. I mix speedlights with monolights all the time using these.

[time2smile]

I may be off base here, but do your preflash manually (FV) This will meter your exposure and eliminate the preflash, that I think is causeing your optics to fire early.

I always thought the su800 was for bodies that dont have the commander built in, as in my D50. The D90 CLS rocks.

If you dont mind manual flash, I just pick up the rf602 from evilbay and they seem to be working great.