D40 and off camera flash solutons

[lakeith79]

Hi all.

I have a question more about speed lights and camera compatibility.

I bought a d40 about 6 months ago and have enjoyed a love-hate relationship ever since. I do love the photo's it takes and its size, but I hate the limitations i run into every so often when I want to be a little more adventerous.

I bought a SB600, and im intersted in moving it off the camera body. Anywhere else really, just to explore and learn. Im trying to figure out what options I have for doing so. I've heard\read (possibly incorrectly, Im not really sure) that I needed a different equipment combination to make the flash sync\fire off-body.

Can anyone give me the lowdown? Meanwhile, im off to google.

[dakwegmo]

With that combination of camera and flash you'll need some extra equipment to get the flash off camera. The cheapest option is going to be to buy an optical slave trigger. This will let you use the pop-up flash on the d40 to trigger the flash. They don't work very well outside on bright days, and are annoying when you have other people around firing flashes, but that's the price you pay to get an inexpensive solution. Another cheap option is to go with a wired connection. You'll need a couple hotshoe to pc/miniphone adapters and a miniphone cable.

If you're looking for something to give you a little more range, you'll need to start looking at radio triggers. On the cheap end you have the Cactus Triggers and Pocket Wizards that are very expensive, but much more reliable.

[lakeith79]

That's exactly what I was looking for. Thanks a ton!

[candleman]

Originally Posted by lakeith79

That's exactly what I was looking for. Thanks a ton!

RE: the reliabilty of cactus triggers... they are bloody good.

i've had 3 strobes running on them for over a year now.. only had one insance of strange behaviour, and the only times they have mis-fired is if the battery was dying, or the strobe hadnt recycled yet.

the battery in the transmitter thus far has been replaced once, and its been going strong for the last 9 months.
i use them every week.

[Almond.Butterscotch]

the cactus triggers are what I use- dirt cheap and more reliable than most claim. I'm sure this point is true for $400 pocketwizards too, but if you haven't fired your strobe in a couple minutes and the strobe's gone into standby, the first shot you take wont fire the strobe, but just wake it up.

you do get misfires some times, but for the price, it's expected.

Also, from my tests, I can get ranges of more than 200 yards, straight outta the box.

[inkista]

I got 700 yards with my Yongnuo RF-602s. And they wake up sleeping flashes, and do double-duty as a shutter remote. Same price as the Cactus V4s.

But before you go there, an optical slave is a good cheap way to get started, another is a sync cord. Unfortunately, neither the D40 or the SB-600 has a PC port, so you'll probably have to get hotshoe adapters to use a regular sync cord, or you could get a TTL-capable cord and still have i-TTL functionality.

With optical slaves, cheap radio triggers, and sync cords, you're going to lose all hotshoe communication signals except for the central "fire" pin signal. So, no i-TTL, no high-speed synch, no remote power level adjustment. Only two high-end triggering systems can maintain all the other hotshoe pin signals and those are the RadioPopper PX and the PocketWizard TTL units (which aren't yet available for Nikon but will be soon).

[ChristieLee]

I have the D40, and an SB600 speedlight. I haven't tried to use the the light remotely, but reading the instructions, all you should need is a remote cable. Its supposed to keep all of the same functionality with the cord.