Camera/lighting question. Your thoughts?

Baaaark · Jan 24, 2011

I don't know what kind of camera to buy. I'm not looking to be told what to get, but am looking for suggestions to help me consider all options and see things from all sides. I have already gone to the store and tried them out, but I ended up liking and wanting them all (excluding the Canon), lol.

I pretty much know what I want--live view, IS/VR either camera or lens, and the ability to auto-focus all lenses (e.g. no d3100). The D90 is perfect, but I don't have that much money so I have to make do with something else.

The part that is throwing me is the built-in lighting systems each brand offers. I enjoy portraiture the most, and so I want a camera that will make lighting on me easy. Nikon's CLS is considered to be the best, but is it really that much better than anything else? Will an Olympus or Pentax be able to program moderately complex flash sequences, or is Nikon the only camera that can do this? And lastly, what about third party stuff like Pocket Wizards?

All of this is so confusing, and every Google search I do (hundreds) gets me nowhere. I just want a camera that I can take into the studio and not be holding me back constantly. Please help!?

Village Idiot · Jan 24, 2011

Baaaark said:
I don't know what kind of camera to buy. I'm not looking to be told what to get, but am looking for suggestions to help me consider all options and see things from all sides. I have already gone to the store and tried them out, but I ended up liking and wanting them all (excluding the Canon), lol.

I pretty much know what I want--live view, IS/VR either camera or lens, and the ability to auto-focus all lenses (e.g. no d3100). The D90 is perfect, but I don't have that much money so I have to make do with something else.

The part that is throwing me is the built-in lighting systems each brand offers. I enjoy portraiture the most, and so I want a camera that will make lighting on me easy. Nikon's CLS is considered to be the best, but is it really that much better than anything else? Will an Olympus or Pentax be able to program moderately complex flash sequences, or is Nikon the only camera that can do this? And lastly, what about third party stuff like Pocket Wizards?

All of this is so confusing, and every Google search I do (hundreds) gets me nowhere. I just want a camera that I can take into the studio and not be holding me back constantly. Please help!?

CLS and all the other proprietary flash control system are only for small speedlights, mainly ones made by that manufacture. There are third party speedlights available that will work with CLS type systems, but compatibility with all cameras of the brand they're designed for isn't guaranteed.

Now for portrait lighting, using automatically controlled lighting maybe not be your best bet, not to mention it's expensive. For the price of three TTL controlled speedlights, you can get manually controlled speedlights or even studio lights for the same price, if not cheaper. If you're subject is static and not constantly moving around, then in my opinion, TTL enabled lighting is pointless. Not to mention that all of those systems are based on light controlling the power of the remote flashes. If you're shooting outdoors or in a very bright environment, your range and reliability can be severely reduced if you're not using a third party option to help extend the range (Most costing about $400 to get started with one light.)

Items like Pocket Wizards are triggers. There are triggers that will just cause a strobe to flash, there are triggers that will remotely let you adjust the power of a strob that's manual or on manual mode, and there's triggers that extend the range of TTL lighting by using radio transmissions.