Off camera flash with the D300
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It’s one of the things that I like about the D300: the built-in flash can trigger an external flash like the SB-800 or the SB-600 without any need for additional equipment. But having used this option quite a bit for the past month I also learned about a couple of its downsides.
For one thing, the D300 really slows down the shooting frequency when you use the built-in flash. No Continuous shooting mode (only the first picture gets a flash), and even in Single shot mode there’s a noticeable delay between pictures; I use the battery grip so the cycle time shouldn’t be that long – my guess is this is all trying to prevent over-heating of the flash.
The second downside is kind of obvious. You always have the frontal flash as part of the picture composition. Yes, via the menu that controls the CLS settings for the flash you can tell the camera to underexpose the built-in flash and to compensate by over-exposing the secondary flash, but this seems more like a kludge to me.
I looked at PocketWizards but find them a bit too expensive for my liking. I also looked at the Gadget Infinity wireless trigger that keeps getting mentioned on Strobist (btw: one of the best sites out there about off-camera flash photography). But the more I read the more I wonder about their reliability.
I can’t wait to see reviews of the RadioPopper. Sounds almost too good to be true. So far this seems to hit the sweet spot of price and functionality. But now they actually need to deliver that in real life.
In the meantime I’ve done a few shots with a cable based off-camera flash setup (using HH cable and a hot-shoe adapter, both left over from my experiments with the Rebel XT; on the D300 with an SB-800 one could of course simply use a PC cable), but frankly that’s just way more trouble than it’s worth. So I will get one of the wireless solutions at some point; I guess after the RadioPoppers ship and have been reviewed.
There’s a menu setting on the D300 to totally zero out illumination from the internal flash when shooting CLS.
With this option, you’d still see a tiny point of light if you’re shooting shiny objects at close distances, but for most other kind of photography, the light contribution from the popup flash is negligible.
You’ve probably tried this, but if you shoot in JPEG or 12-bit RAW, the “chatter” between the internal and external flash is very, very quick, so there shouldn’t be a noticeable lag Shooting in 14-bit RAW results in a longer delay.
Which menu setting is it that lets you zero out illumination from the built in flash David?
Cheers,
Aymi :)
Nikon produces the sg3-ir filter.
You put in in the hotshoe, and it covers the flash, only letting the infrared signal through.
This way you trigger the external flash, avoiding the “tiny point of light” mentioned by David Chin.
The biult-in flash need never be part of the picture.
Allso, with zero illumination (the — choice in the flashmenu, makes for less batteryconsumption.
Aymi: to “null out” the built in flash, use D300 control E3, which is the one you use to enable the off-camera “creative lighting system” in the first place. When you activate that control and select “Commander mode”, you’ll get a menu that looks like:
Built in Flash TTL 0
Group A TTL 0
Group B TTL 0
Channel 1 CH
Change the mode of the built in flash to “–”, so it reads:
Built in Flash — 0
Group A TTL 0
Group B TTL 0
Channel 1 CH
That’s it. The built in flash will still do the control blinks, but won’t do a bright flash while the shutter is open, and so will contribute little or nothing (not sure which) to the exposure.
As others have noted, if that control flash is bothering your portrait subjects, you can get a little “blocker” from Nikon that hangs over it. I don’t have that and haven’t tried it. Good luck!
Noah