Changing bulb in Nikon SB 900?

[haring]

Is it easy to change the bulb in a Nikon SB 900 flash?

I haven't blown it yet but I am about turning off the overheating protection in my Nikon SB 900 flash. It keeps shutting down in the middle of wedding ceremonies when there are lots of emotion and tons of opportunities to take pictures...

My plan is the turn off the overheating protection and change the bulb when it melts. I can get the bulb from ebay inexpensively...

What do you think?

[scootermcq]

Well, since there is a capacitor in there that can stop the heart in a small elephant, I personally would not be messing around on the inside of any strobe.....

[bhursey]

Is it still under warranty? It really should not be turning off on you that much.... Unless your doing like 200 full pops in a row. You might bump the iso up and not do as powerful of pops also what type of batteries are you using. I noticed Lithiums over heated a flash I had quicker than Nickel Metal Hydrides or NiCAD batteries .

I would also not take apart the flash. Really your life is more important.

[OsmosisStudios]

Send it to Nikon. For your own safety

[inkista]

Originally Posted by haring

Is it easy to change the bulb in a Nikon SB 900 flash?

How's your desoldering/soldering technique? And do you know how to drain a capacitor safely? For some folks this is easy--they have a solder sucker on the workbench, and a drawerful of resistors. But I'd say if you don't tinker with electronics as a rule, this is not a plug'n'play type replacement.

Spell foto with the letter F: DIY Nikon SB-600 speedlight Flash Tube replacement
(It's for the SB-600, but I'd assume the procedure for the 900 would be similar).