Off-Camera flash setup

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DaveHope

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Dave Hope
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Hi guys,

I'll start by saying that I'm pretty clueless about off-camera flash (heck, I'm clueless about flash, period.)

I use my Nikon D200 with an SB600 on and off-camera using the commander mode on the D200.

I'm at the stage where I'd like to add some more flash's into the equation but am not sure of the best way to do this.

The one thing I'm sure of is that my budget wont stretch to buying 2-3 more SB600's :)

I'd like to use my D200 to trigger 3 off-camera flash units (including my SB600). I'm guessing there's some fairly easy way of doing this using pre-flash'es or some kind of IR trigger?

Any explanation & suggested budget kit would be awesome.

Thanks guys!
 
What about a few cheap seconhand flashguns and those Cactus triggers? I havent tried them but some folk on here gave me advice and they are dirt cheap. They are wireless receivers and a transmitter atteched to the hotshoe. Think they come from gadgetinfinity.com and are only about 30 quid or something like that.
 
Thanks BigLoada!

Could anyone recommend any cheap flash untis to go with the cactus v2s receivers?
 
stick with flashes that allow commander mode, i have cactus triggers and much prefer using the eTTL command. Allows you to control the output of each slavefrom your camera without having to go to the back of each flash

Get some sigma dg st500's or some such, can be had for not much at all used!
 
Thanks guys.

i-TTL would be preferred but if I went for some SB-400's I'd be looking at £75 per flash which is probably pushing my budget.

Presumably if I did go down the Catcut v2s route I could use pretty much any flash? - Dal, which Vivitar flashgun are people talking about? - Would be good to take a look at that!
 
Dave,

Look on ebay or your local camera shop. I picked up an SB-80 for 50 quid. My mate picked up an SB-28 today for 70 quid and for off camera flash, they are far, far better than the SB-400. You just need to look around. The Vivitar flash gun is the 285HV. You MUST get the HV model as the older version can kill your camera.
 
I've got two Vivitar 285HV's and although I can trigger them using Cactus you could also try Wein Peanuts. Little optical slaves that plug into the Vivitars and trigger them using your Nikon flash. I got three from ebay for £15.

Both methods don't allow for ETTL which would be the advantage of sticking with the Nikon flashes.

Manual can be a lot of fun though so it very much depends what you want to do.
 
Thanks again for all your help guys.

Looking on eBay, the 285HV's go for ~£50 which isn't much under the price of an SB-28 or SB-80.

Presumably if I went for the SB-28 or SB-80 I'd be able to use the ttl mode on the d200 to trigger the flashes?
 
Couple of points - firstly a non-HV 285 won't kill your camera if used off camera, unless you hook it up via a cable (HV just refers to the ability to hook up with an external power unit and older [i.e not new] HV models will still mess up a dslr), secondly, a new 285HV is about £50, any SB-24/25/28 you find now will be 15 years or so old and they won't give you ttl on a D200 either....
 
Thanks Flash, think I'm going to go for the 285H as per all your suggestions.

I've done a little research and it looks like the D200 is rated to 250Volts. Apparently the original 285's had a sync voltage of between 200 and 260V. So would probably be fine unless you're unlucky enough to have one which is > 250V and even then a quick check with a multimeter would tell you.

The newer 285HV's have a much lower sync voltage of just 12V, so are going to be perfectly safe on pretty much any camera.

I'll probably get a 285HV & cactus v2s from gadget infinity as an early Christmas present :)
 
Just picked up a Nikon SB26 for £30 –*bargain. Don't think I could ahve got one on ebay for less than £60. That'll go nicely with my SB800 and 550EX and the ebay triggers.

Davehope, ffordes has some Vivitars in for cheap - they have them with vari power bits for about £40.

Really looking forward to seeing what the SB26 can do for me, especially with the built-in slave and the delay mode :)
 
Isn't ITTL pretty worthless for off camera flash?

I mean it measures distance (with the right lens) and calculates the flash power, which is fine if the flash is sitting in the hot shoe of the camera...

If I have flashes stuck out left and right of my subject, how can it know the distance between anything?
 
I have a D200 and SB-800, and use them in manual mode on all my shoots. I find using auto settings and TTL is a pain and you dont get nice dramatic shots, instead you just get plain boring lighting.

I use Cactus triggers and i love them, i found CLS was pretty useless on outside location shoots
 
Desanynik, Nikon's CLS (Creative Lighting System) uses i-TTL information relayed from each flash back to the camera, regardless of wherever the flashes are positioned, to give the best exposure.

The user can then alter the power output of any of his flashes from the back of the camera (in the menu), to work like off-camera flash bracketing without having to actually change setting on the actual flash by hand.

CLS just means the flashes talk to each other wirelessly without the need for 3rd-party triggers like Skyports and PT-04s.

It's a very trick system but it will have its limitations. I just wish I could afford enough SB800s to try it out properly!! :)
 
CLS is fine if you don't need to have the flashes more than a few feet from the camera and can have line-of-sight between the flashes and the camera
 
specialman said:
Desanynik, Nikon's CLS (Creative Lighting System) uses i-TTL information relayed from each flash back to the camera, regardless of wherever the flashes are positioned, to give the best exposure.
Click to expand...

Ok, I'm a newbie to both flash and Nikon, but I still can't see how it can work other than being able to set manual power levels to the flashes remotely...

Canon's ETTL (of which I am a little more familiar) uses data from the lens to calculate flash power, and I assume Nikon is the same. Thats fine when it sets the distance to the focused subject when the two are in the same place, but off camera how can it know???

My flash could be closer or further away than I am with the camera??

I have had a quick play with Skyports but as you say, only in a manual power setting.... a lot of fun though :D

Haven't played with CLS yet, only got my Nikon gear last week!
 
desantnik, I'm no expert on CLS but from watching a few tutorials on-line and reading up on some stuff, because it's all Nikon kit that 'talks' to itself, no matter where the flashes are positioned it will give you a TTL-style reading that you can then apply flash compensation to at your will through the camera to boost/reduce light in certain areas.

There was a good one through strobist.com with this US photographer who was using CLS to shoot cheerleaders in a school hall. It kind of shows the simplicity of the system.

Like FITP says though, it's not foolproof and the whole 'line of sight' thing is a key hurdle, as is flash distance. I suppose CLS is good for more intimate shoots rather than lighting massive areas but then again, when you need that much light, you'd then be looking at moving up to portable studio flash.

I suppsoe Nikon has to be appluaded for making it easy to set up –*we'll just have to wait and see who takes the next step to create a set up that can rival the range of a transmitter/reciever set-up.

I think if you're serious (like Cherryrig is) then you're going to be 'staging' your lighting and not changing it all too often through a shoot so the manual flash approach is going to be better via skyports/pocket wizards etc.

I'm hoping this SB26 I've ordered comes tomorrow so i can have a fiddle tomorrow night :)

EDIT: It's Joe McNally and this is part of his tutorial
 
Its all manual stuff for me, off camera flash will be for motorsport action - sandwiching riders between a pair of flashes either side of the track.

Works lovely when you get it right!

Think the Skyports are the way forward, CLS might be for just some crazy fun around the pitlane :D
 
Does anyone have any links to actual images or graphics on basic off camera flash set ups, for absolute beginners? For example, a couple of flashes on stands, maybe an umbrella, and camera of course, shooting something simple, a still life for example, to give an idea of positioning and the like? Something to start from before you then start getting creative?
 
Hacker did something about lighting set-ups some time ago - think it might be in the tutorials section maybe.

I'm of the thinking that lighting set-ups really are down to experimenting. You're 'standard' set-up of two lights set at 45 degrees to the subject and a flash on the background is a good starting point but a lot of it's dictated by flash output power and how big the space you have to light is. This is what I look at when positioning lights and the distances away.

It's very much about what you want to achieve.

This is basically one light on the right of the subject with a light facing the oppsite direction from the left that's aimed at the backdrop. It was ages ago but I vaguely remember the rear light being just a stop or so more powerful than the subject light so I got the white background without totally losing the gradient.

This was a black background and black card with a hole cut out that the bottle was positioned over. I had a light underneath to light the inside of the bottle and a flash to the right on minimal power just to pick out some highlight on the foil. The weirdness inside the bottle was condensation from the heat of the light inside the bottle.

This link might be useful

Lighting is just too massive a subject to explain in a nutshell - but it's very, very fun :)
 
Many times, you can get around the line-of-sight problem posed by optical slave triggers by pointing an on-camera flash toward the ceiling or a nearby wall to trigger the flashes. If you've got really high ceilings (as in an auditorium) you'll probably have problems.

Also, any recently-manufactured Vivitar 285HV will have a sync voltage that's somewhere near the acceptability range of Canon's cameras. (I don't remember if it's 6v or 12v. All I know is that my camera hasn't been fried yet).

If sync voltage is a concern, buy a Wein Safe Sync. I don't think that it'll support ttl (it might) but it WILL keep your camera safe when you must use a PC cord to trigger studio lights. It has a pc port on it.

If you need up-to-date info on flash trigger voltages, try this link. I see some changes on it since I visited it a few years ago, so I imagine that it is updated with some regularity:

http://www.botzilla.com/photo/strobeVolts.html
 
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