Off camera flash

[VltnDennis]

Well i own a nikon d40 with an sb-600 and i've been wanting to set up a mim "studio" kind of thing in my garage but i would like to know how or what do i need to fire the sb-600 off the camera and lets say if i get another speed light like a vivitar will it fire along with the nikon?

Oh and one more thing which i think im screwd but . . . the pop up flash on my d40 will not fire , thats one of the reasons why i bought the sb-600

 

[fiveoboy01]

Well i own a nikon d40 with an sb-600 and i've been wanting to set up a mim "studio" kind of thing in my garage but i would like to know how or what do i need to fire the sb-600 off the camera and lets say if i get another speed light like a vivitar will it fire along with the nikon?

Oh and one more thing which i think im screwd but . . . the pop up flash on my d40 will not fire , thats one of the reasons why i bought the sb-600

The D40 does not have commander mode so even if your pop-up on the camera worked you couldn't control the flash remotely, at least TTL.

I don't know if the SB600 has SU-4 mode but if it did, you could set it in that mode and it would fire when it saw the flash from your pop-up(you'd have to set flash power on the speedlight manually though, and turn the flash power on your pop-up all the way down so that you'd have minimal light where you didn't want it). But again since your pop-up is broken, you're out of luck.

Only way you can do it in this situation would be to use wireless triggers like cybersyncs, and you would have to set flash power manually. You could use a hotshoe pc adapter and a pc cord directly to the flash but that's going to limit your movement.

Re - second speedlight, again if either light has a slave mode you can set it to fire when it sees the flash from the other unit. OR you could use a second reciever if you were using wireless triggers like cybersyncs.

 

[IgsEMT]

Grab your self some white foam paper and shoot through it at around 1/2 to full power. It won't be as good as umbrella or softbox but will be pretty darn close. If you get your self a TTL cord then you can move the flash off-camera and it'll give you even more kick in your lighting.

 

[VltnDennis]

Well i own a nikon d40 with an sb-600 and i've been wanting to set up a mim "studio" kind of thing in my garage but i would like to know how or what do i need to fire the sb-600 off the camera and lets say if i get another speed light like a vivitar will it fire along with the nikon?

Oh and one more thing which i think im screwd but . . . the pop up flash on my d40 will not fire , thats one of the reasons why i bought the sb-600

The D40 does not have commander mode so even if your pop-up on the camera worked you couldn't control the flash remotely, at least TTL.

I don't know if the SB600 has SU-4 mode but if it did, you could set it in that mode and it would fire when it saw the flash from your pop-up(you'd have to set flash power on the speedlight manually though, and turn the flash power on your pop-up all the way down so that you'd have minimal light where you didn't want it). But again since your pop-up is broken, you're out of luck.

Only way you can do it in this situation would be to use wireless triggers like cybersyncs, and you would have to set flash power manually. You could use a hotshoe pc adapter and a pc cord directly to the flash but that's going to limit your movement.

Re - second speedlight, again if either light has a slave mode you can set it to fire when it sees the flash from the other unit. OR you could use a second reciever if you were using wireless triggers like cybersyncs.

hmm i see , so with the ttl cord i will only be able to use one off camera flash. but what if i want 2 of them? the only option will be to upgrade the camera body?

 

[fiveoboy01]

You'll need to see if the second speedlight(not on a cord) has a slave mode where it can fire when it sees the light from another flash. You'd have to set it manually but you'd have another light.

Keep in mind that a TTL cord is not the same as a PC cord, you can link together 3 TTL cords and get some distance but your movement will still be limited. PC cord will do the same for you but it can be longer. However you will lose TTL capability.

 

[jnm]

for not much more than the price of the hot shoe adapter and pc cord you can get yourself a cactus vs2 wireless system and use it anywhere you want.

 

[fokker]

Not sure about nikons, but with my 400d the popup flash stopped working because there are two little microswitches inside the hotshoe that get pushed in when an external flash is attached, and one of them became stuck, so the camera always thinks there's an external flash attached and wont fire the popup. I imagine a fairly common problem and probably not limited to canon? Should be able to see fairly easily anyway.

 

[KmH]

The SB-600 does not have SU-4 mode allowing it to be triggered optically with the light from another flash or your pop-up.

The SB-600 does not have an off camera terminal for cords.

You can get various brands of optical triggers, like Wein, that work line-of-sight

You could fire the flash off camera if you have a Nikon SU-800 Commander unit (about $250 new) on the hot shoe.

Ebay has several radio trigger kits you can get for under $30, including shipping.

PT-04 CN Radio Wireless Remote Flash Trigger—2Rx PT04 - eBay (item 270455338743 end time Nov-10-09 23:50:11 PST)

 

[VltnDennis]

thank you KmH , i will look into the radio trigger kits from ebay.