Studio lighting and Flash on NIKON D90

mariahfleck

mariahfleck

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Can anyone help me by telling me how to stop the 'on camera flash' from firing when trying to use with studio lights?
I'm using a NIKON D90 which triggers my studio lights perfectly but at the same time the camera flash goes off creating a shadow or just generally altering the lighting that i wanted. If i turn the flash off, the camera won't then trigger the studio lights!!!

Help????
 
mariahfleck said:
Can anyone help me by telling me how to stop the 'on camera flash' from firing when trying to use with studio lights?
I'm using a NIKON D90 which triggers my studio lights perfectly but at the same time the camera flash goes off creating a shadow or just generally altering the lighting that i wanted. If i turn the flash off, the camera won't then trigger the studio lights!!!

Help????
Click to expand...

Trigger or sync cord in the studio and leave the on camera flash off
 
on my d700 and d300 you can set it to trigger the flash but not affect exposure, not sure if you can do it on a d90 but this is how i do it:

Custom setting menu -> Bracketing/Flash -> Flash control for builtin flash -> Commander Mode

then for built in flash set the mode to -- which should mean it will fire the flash but not affect the exposure.
 
I had same problem, had to make sure trigger had made good contact on shoe, sounds basic but thats what my problem was
 
uk_seawolf said:
I had same problem, had to make sure trigger had made good contact on shoe, sounds basic but thats what my problem was
Click to expand...

I'm not using a trigger on the camera in the shoe. The camera just sets the studio lights off on it's own. I assumed that it had a build in trigger or something!!??

daharro - I'll have a look at my settings

Thank you everyone.
 
MnM said:
See if this helps

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v51/dmcantrell/photography/d300_e3menu.gif
Click to expand...

But those menus, and the onboard flash are for controlling the CLS. Using it to control studio heads is going to lead to issues. I should expand on that, the onboard at present is evidently firing the studio heads via their optical slaves. Switching the onboard to commander mode will only give you a set of pre flashes from it. These may well not be strong enough to fire your heads, or in any case if the do fire will cause them to be out of sync with your shutter, causing you to only catch the tail of the flash if anything. Buy a cheap radio trigger to do this instead. You'll pick one up for £20 easily enough
 
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mariahfleck said:
I'm not using a trigger on the camera in the shoe. The camera just sets the studio lights off on it's own. I assumed that it had a build in trigger or something!!??

daharro - I'll have a look at my settings

Thank you everyone.
Click to expand...

You may find that the on-camera flash is triggering the optical slaves of your studio flash, which is fine.

But if you want to reduce the effect of your on-camera flash, why not try blu-tac'ing a black paper mask in front of the on-camera flash --- not so much that it stops triggering your studio flash, but enough to take out the unwanted light.

Alternatively a radio trigger to fit on the hot shoe would do the job. Or a hot shoe adapter with a sync cable --- or ?
 
I use a D7000 which is pretty similar to the D90 I think. In commander mode (e3 menu) even it you set flash to cmdr you will still see the pre flash although the full flash is not fired. This will activate speedlites or strobes if they are set on optical. Don't forget that this is infra red and so needs line of site. Wireless triggers (I use Yongnuo 603) don't need line of site and so go through stuff and are generally more reliable. Your on camera flash does not go off as the trigger sits in your flash socket. You can still mix stobes and off camera flash however - just need for triggers unless you link several strobes with optical slaves.
 
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