Nikon with Yongnuo 565EX and Nissin Di866, help with iTTL and CLS

Mystery

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I am hoping someone has both of these speedlites and can help me understand a little bit about how to set them up. I am a beginner with photography and just barely got these as my first lights. I know I don't fully understand all this. I have done hours and hours of reading this weekend to try and figure it out myself before I came here asking for help, but I am getting to a point where I feel I am wasting my time because I might be expecting something this equipment just can't do. Hopefully, someone can set me straight.

Primarily, I am using one Nissin di866 and two Yongnuo 565EX's off camera in a studio environment. For this setup, I have little need to use TTL and will pretty much set everything up manually. This, I know how to do, albeit not very well, yet. However, I sprung a little extra cash to get these lights because they are advertised and discussed as being CLS compatible. I'll be honest, having only a few days experience with this equipment (camera included because I just upgraded from a D40 and D50 to a D300s this week too) I am having a really hard time understanding exactly what CLS is capable of and how it compares to TTL. It makes me wonder if CLS compatible means it works like a Nikon CLS light, or it just has a few features of CLS to make it "compatible". Reading around the net I see a lot of respected photographers talking about these lights and they all seem to have some conflicting comments. Some say they work perfectly with CLS, some say TTL only and no CLS and one even said the 565EX works with TTL on camera but you can't even trigger it off camera. Well, I've already been playing with these lights and I can certainly trigger it off camera in commander mode and adjust EV from the camera just fine, so I know my camera is triggering it.

So, I guess my first question is... Should the flash (both the Nissin and Yongnuo) be giving me some sort of information on the display for what it is doing in remote (slave) TTL mode? I feel like I should be able to look at it and see some sort of data. It seems like the power output is adjusting based on TTL from what I can see. If I put my camera into Shutter priority and put it at the highest f/stop possible, the flash seems to be quite a bit brighter than at the lowest f/stop. I just don't have that sensitive of an eye for this yet, so I can't tell if I am just fooling myself. Is there a way to control a test that the flash and camera are communicating properly and doing their jobs?

Second, I assume it is impossible for the flash to know how far it is from the subject to adjust zoom when off camera, so is it normal for an off camera flash to default to its tightest angle? I ask because on the 565ex in remote TTL, it just says zoom --. I assume by default it is zoomed to the tightest zoom angle because the Nissin di866 defaults to 105mm. The Yongnuo book did say zoom is manual in this mode, but I swear I read somewhere that one of these lights should be registering focal length of the zoom on the camera, I just can't remember where I read it. I am on info overload!

Third question is, I read about everyone saying to lower output to: a) save on battery and b)save wear and tear on the flash unit. I am fine with this, except I can't figure out how to lower the power level in TTL mode at all on the flash unit itself, but only using the EV compensation in my camera's commander. I am not sure I understand the difference between the two, but I assume lowering the power level on the flash is not the same as EV compensation on the camera, because lowering EV too much seems to give underexposed images. Am I correct in thinking that if "CLS" or "iTTL" was working properly, a flash unit would tell the commander that its power level is lower and compensate on the camera by adjusting exposure, shutter or f/stop to get the properly exposed image? And +-EV is just a fine tuning I can use if I need it?

I specifically got the di866 so I could use it off camera in environments where CLS would be helpful. If I am completely mistaken about what it is capable of, I may return it and get a SB-910, but I feel I am just missing something and should be able to do everything the SB can do. Can anyone help me make sense of this?

Thanks for taking time to read and reply.
-a frustrated beginner
 

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