Flashes

[SaraJean]

Hello,
I'm looking to in the (hopefully) near future to get a flash for my Nikon D60. I haven't worked with flashes at all really so I'm looking for advice on what I should be looking for in a flash.

I'm in the best sense a general photographer. I do a fair share of still life, macro, and Live band shots (flashes are allowed at most venues I attend). I'm not doing anything professional, mainly for myself, so I don't need top end. I just need to know what to look for what is worth the money.

Any help would be great!
Thanks!

[zona5101]

i would be looking for a flash that has these two features:

1) ability to do ittl or ettl with your camera. This is electronic sharing of exposure, distance, shutter, apreture and other stuff between the camera and flash. (ittl and ettl are essentially the same thing but Nikon uses on term and Canon the other)

2) Ability of the flash head to tilt and swivel

[dvtldav]

+1 to what Zona5101 said.

I got a Promaster to use with my Canon XSi and have been pleased with the results I have gotten. Mine will talk to my camera and do pretty much everything that the Canon flashes do but not everything. If I use the on camera flash I can use the Promaster as a off camera slave plus it was about 1/3 less than the Canon.

Dave

[SaraJean]

Do you mind me asking what model you got? They seem to have quite a few and like I said , I'm lost in the dark on this one.

[Rentham]

Originally Posted by zona5101

1) ability to do ittl or ettl with your camera. This is electronic sharing of exposure, distance, shutter, apreture and other stuff between the camera and flash. (ittl and ettl are essentially the same thing but Nikon uses on term and Canon the other)

I disagree with this part. Buying a TTL-capable flash will increase the cost of the unit, sometimes considerably. It also adds a layer of complexity that most beginners to flash don't need. If your TTL flash isn't giving you the light you want, and you don't know the basics of flash exposure, it can be hard to figure out what is going wrong.

A basic manual flash is a great start in my opinion. You can get something like an SB-25 or SB-26 on eBay pretty cheap. The LumoPro line from Midwest Photo Exchange is also an astounding value. Grab some triggers, a stand, and an umbrella. You'll be set for a good while.

[dvtldav]

Originally Posted by SaraJean

Do you mind me asking what model you got? They seem to have quite a few and like I said , I'm lost in the dark on this one.

I got the 7500EDF Digital. If you go to Promaster.com they explain everything they have.

Dave

[candleman]

Originally Posted by Rentham

I disagree with this part. Buying a TTL-capable flash will increase the cost of the unit, sometimes considerably. It also adds a layer of complexity that most beginners to flash don't need. If your TTL flash isn't giving you the light you want, and you don't know the basics of flash exposure, it can be hard to figure out what is going wrong.

A basic manual flash is a great start in my opinion. You can get something like an SB-25 or SB-26 on eBay pretty cheap. The LumoPro line from Midwest Photo Exchange is also an astounding value. Grab some triggers, a stand, and an umbrella. You'll be set for a good while.

see more Very Demotivational

We're not talking about OFF CAMERA flash.... I agree with Bruce (Zona)
an iTTL flash is your best bet.. its easier than manual flas, because it will work in Auo/Aperture Priority/Shutterspeed priority

An Sb600 or Sb900 are good options.. the new SB700 is overpriced and underpowered IMHO

Although, be aware.. your D60 will be limited to 1/200th as it does not support HighSpeedSync.. which means you wont get the most out of your flash.. but it will still work.

an iTTL flash will work On camera beautifully... perfect for events etc. etc.
It can also be taken off camera with a simple trigger like RF-602 or CactusV5

[Rentham]

Thanks, I missed the part in the OP that stated she wanted iTTL only but your awesome meme straightened me right out.

[candleman]

Originally Posted by rentham

thanks, i missed the part in the op that stated she wanted ittl only but your awesome meme straightened me right out.

i'm glad you appreciated the meme ...i spend waaaaay too much time on that site. LOL

[inkista]

Just to back it up and slow it down a little, here's what some of the jargon being thrown around with flashes means:

iTTL. This is Nikon's automatic flash exposure system. The camera and flash can "talk" to each other. The camera tells the flash to send out a burst of a known brightness, then meters this "pre-flash" burst, and based upon the metering results, can then set the flash power to where the exposure system thinks it needs to be for a good exposure. This is similar to having A or P mode on the camera: the system automatically sets the power output level on the flash for you. (TTL, btw, stands for "through-the-lens", which is how the metering is done).

iTTL becomes important with on-camera flash (where the flash is mounted on the camera's hotshoe) because your main technique with on-camera flash is bouncing. This is where you point the head of the flash at a reflective surface (wall, ceiling, floor, window, whatever) and use the reflected light as your main source of illumination. You do this to spread out (diffuse) the light and make it softer. This eliminates that harsh-in-the-headlights look most newbies associate with flash.

But when you bounce the light, you increase the distance the light has to travel, and you'll have to compensate for this by increasing the flash power. iTTL can do this for you automatically.

The bouncing is also why you want to look at tilt and swivel on the head. The more directions you can point the flash, the more lighting directions you can choose from. Ideally, you want a flash that can swivel 360° around [most, however, will only do 270°], and that can tilt to be set straight up [90°].

Another thing to look for on a flash is the power output. However, guide numbers (which supposedly tell you this) can be very deceiving, thanks to another flash feature, which is a zooming head.

When a flash has a zooming head, the spread of the light from the flash can be controlled, so that the wider the lens you're using, the wider the spread of the light. BUT the tradeoff for this spread is how far you can throw the light. The wider the spread, the shorter the distance the light can travel. The narrower and more concentrated the spread, the farther it can travel. Some manufacturers use the narrowest spread when they give the guide number, which makes the flash look more powerful. So, always check the iso AND focal length that was used with the GN when comparing. It can be hard to get an apples-to-apples comparison on these things, so don't always trust that a bigger guide number means a more powerful flash. Sites like speedlight.net are helping us get there, though, by actually testing to find the GN of the flash with all the other factors being equal.

The guide number of a flash, btw, is a way to calculate the distance the light will travel, given a specific aperture. Your guide number = distance x f-number. So, if you're shooting at f/8, and your flash has a guide number of 40 ft, @iso 100 (zoomed to 35mm), and you use those settings, you can expect your light to travel about 5 feet before falling off.

CLS (Creative Light System) is the Nikon system for wireless control of off-camera flashes. You're unlikely to find this on third-party flashes, although some makes like Nissin are adding these to their speedlights. This is a near-infrared light-based proprietary signalling system that has fuller function than most other off-camera triggering systems. You can use iTTL, remotely command power levels, and use high-speed synch. Generally, CLS function will be slave-only (in which case you need a commander unit), or master-or-commander. The D90 and up camera bodies have a commander in the pop-up flash).

High-speed sync is the ability to use a shutter speed higher than your camera body's max. sync speed. Most camera bodies have a maximum flash sync speed in the neighborhood of 1/200s. Because of the way that camera shutters work, physically, a faster shutter speed means that part of your sensor will be covered by a shutter leaf during the exposure if you use a faster shutter speed than this, and you'll get dark bars at the top/bottom (or both) of the frame. High-speed sync means the camera and flash can time pulses of light from the flash as the shutter gap sweeps over the sensor, so the entire frame can be illuminated by the flash. The trade off is a loss of power output from the flash. Again, this is a feature you're unlikely to find on 3rd-party flashes.

Sync ports are a way, other than the flash hotshoe, to tell the flash to fire. The most common interface used is a PC (Prontor/Compur) jack, but some flashes have 1/8" monojacks (so you can use audio cables from Radio Shack, rather than PC cables), and studio lights will have 1/4" monojacks or HH ("household") plugs that are household wallsocket type connections. This may or may not be relevant to you, depending on how soon you find the Strobist website and what type of remote triggering you want to try using.

External battery ports are if your flashes see a lot of heavy use, and you would prefer not to keep popping sets of AAs in and out of the flash all the time.

Multi-mode is where the flash can send out multiple flashes very quickly, so that you can get echoed discrete movement, almost like a time-lapse.

Optical slave is another simplistic way to set off a remote flash without using wired sync methods. Typically, you're looking for whether or not an optical slave can ignore an iTTL pre-flash, and how sensitive it is. On the Nikon side of the fence, SU-4 mode is equivalent to having one built into the hardware, but a few of the older SBs, like the SB-26, SB-28DX and SB-80DX have hardware optical slaves built in, too. This can save you having to get YA radio trigger in a multi-light setup, be a way to use your speedlight off-camera with a P&S, or to help add your light to someone else's setup. Handy feature.

Those are pretty much all the main features I can think of when it comes to flashes, and why you might or might not want them.

For on-camera flash bouncing and your first speedlight, the usual advice is: save up and get the top of the line OEM flash (SB-900). You'll have the most power (so the most range for bounce surfaces) and a head that swivels 360°, as well as a flash with all the bells and whistles to go Strobist, full manual and off-camera. Subsequent additional lights, getting lower-cost manual-only strobes can be a much better buy. But it's always good to have at least one speedlight to pop onto the hotshoe that can do all the fancy stuff.

If you can't afford the top-of-the-line OEM, then get the mid-range OEM (SB-700), or look into getting a used discontinued model, like an SB-800 or SB-600.

If you can't afford that, then there are 3rd party alternatives, but they won't have the same range of features, and their future-compatibility isn't quite as assured.Your best bet are probably the 3rd party TTL-capable and wireless-TTL slave-capable flashes, like the Metz Mecablitz 500 (and up) models, the Nissin Di-822 and Di-622 II, and the Yongnuo YN-565EX. Like all 3rd party equipment, though, you do have to worry about future compatibility. The Metz and Nissin units have upgradeable firmware which can ease this worry, but the Yongnuos are supercheap and do not. Also, the Yongnuo gear doesn't have a great reliability reputation, so if you are buying from Yongnuo directly on eBay, consider what shipping a bum unit back to Hong Kong might be worth, and see what local dealers are offering. There are advantages to going with one of the 3rd party flashes, though, since the Nissin and Yongnuo models sport PC sync ports AND dumb optical slave modes: features that do not exist on the SB-700/SB-600.

There are also cheap manual-only flashes you could consider if you wanted to go Strobist and never use the flash on-camera at all. The two most likely candidates here are the LumoPro LP160, or the Yongnuo YN-560 II. I would also suggest looking at this list on speedlights.net for 3rd-party alternatives if that's the way you're leaning.

And you can always turn iTTL off on a speedlight that's got it. Don't really think it's a handicap, any more than having P or green box auto on a camera mode dial is.