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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
08-02-2009, 09:24 PM
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I think one of the big reasons Nikon has such a reputation for their flash system is the SU-800 Commander. This little unit is one of the coolest gadgets anyone has ever made for a camera. I played with one in a strobist studio one time and I was very impressed. It allows you to control several flashes simultaneously with custom output by each one. You don't have to walk over to each flash to adjust power output as it can all be controlled from on-camera with this unit.
Nikon | SU-800 Wireless Speedlight Commander Unit | 4794 | B&H |
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
08-02-2009, 05:24 PM
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Until yesterday I would have agreed with you about the Nikon flash system (based mostly on reputation). But yesterday I was contracted by a photo company to shoot youth sports portraits using their D200 camera and SB800 flash. The photo company had strict guidelines about exactly what settings they wanted me to use (they have a variety of shooters with varying levels of experience so they like to dictate settings to get consistency). I was shooting in P mode (center weight metering) with the flash in TTL. I was adjusting the flash anywhere from -1/3 to +1 depending on the shot.
What I found was that my flash exposures were coming out all over the place. Like I said it was not my camera and not my memory card so I can't show you any examples but if I snapped off 3 pictures in fairly rapid succession (3 year olds posing for portraits sometime require some fairly rapid fire techniques) I would get 3 completely different exposures.
In addition to the poor flash metering I found the recycle time of the SB800 to be very dissappointing. Despite using brand new batteries I was getting > 1 sec recycle times for many shots. Since I was in TTL mode I don't know exactly how much power it was putting out but my best guess is that if I had been setting the flash power manually (which I would have normally done for these particular shots) I would have been between 1/8 and 1/2 power.
The other thing I learned from the day was that Pentax continues to hold significant advantage over both Canon and Nikon with control layout and ergonomics. If you want to see some odd control features try to figure out how to either format a memory card on a Nikon D200/300 or how to "zoom" in (on the lcd) on a picture you have just taken. The combination button pushing required for those two tasks will amaze the average Pentaxian. It took me almost all day to figure those out even after being shown (quickly) once.
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