Flash Advice for Nikon D40

bschneider5

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I'm quite new to photography, mostly playing around but I would like to do some portraits of my children and family. I guess the first thing I would need is a decent flash, any advice on an affordable flash that will do the job? I am thinking my "studio" would be a room in my basement with virtually no natural lights, fluorescent lights and offwhite walls.
 
A Nikon SB-600 would be the cheapest (NEW from Nikon) flash that would be most useable ($190 to $240 deppending on where its purchased). Has tilt, and swivel funcitons. A $1,000 flash fired from straight ahead would be no better than the camera mounted one. So the bounce and swivel features are very useful.

There are off brand flashes that have similar features starting around $60 or so.

Tilt and swivel functions allows you to bounce the light from different angles. This gives you more options to modify the light to get different effects.

There are so many vairables to lighting really need to know more about what you want to do. Like do you want it soley for "studio" work or you looking for something more usefull for now (ues everywhere).

Budget would be good to know too.
 
Read this:
http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/03/lighting-101.html

You can get one light, a stand, umbrella, adapter, and wireless triggers for about $125. Off camera lighting is what makes portraits.

Of course, it's a manual flash, might not be safe for use on you camera's hot shoe, and requires a little learning. If you just want a flash to plop on top of your camera and have it do everything automatically for you, then an SB is probably the better choice.
 
Thanks guys I really appreciate the advice!
 

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