2 questions about the SB-700 flash!

[WhiteLight]

Actually, Whitelight, the person you should be talking to about speed lights is indeed WayneF. He has far more experience than I do in this area. He can talk circles around me when it comes to those things! lol

That's a lot of good info in the above few posts.
I haven't seen those responses on any forum/blog/site i visited..
All that will for sure help a lot of people make a choice between the 2 flashes
So thanks to both of you for that
i did stumble upon Wayne's site yesterday regarding lighting and there's some great content there too

 

[WayneF]

Actually, I told it wrong, sorry. The SB-700 commander only has two groups anyway, A & B, so it can't do a third anyway.

The SB-910 has three groups, A, B, C, and all can be different mode.

Frankly, for any of them, the Commander AWL system is great in its way for two flashes, but that is a reasonable limit, and to me, seems not the way to expand for larger systems.

My notion is that $547 for a SB-910 seems outlandish for a speedlight. I do seem to buy some things regardless of price, D800, the three f/2.8 lens, etc, but SB-910 is not one, not when there are other choices. Just one opinion. I have two SB-800 since they first came out, and still think they must be the best speedlights known to man.

 

[Don Kuykendall_RIP]

I bought the SB-700 and have never looked back. I think for most of us that is all you need. The SB-400 limits you right off the bat with not being able to bounce but one way. The Sb-700 gives you the bounce either way. How many of us are going to work with more than 2 or 3 Speedlights at a time? Very Few. If you do decide you need more flash units than the SB-700 can handle then just use it for one of you secondary units and buy the 910 at that time.

 

[WayneF]

If you do decide you need more flash units than the SB-700 can handle then just use it for one of you secondary units and buy the 910 at that time.

Waiting until the second one for the SB-910 seems wise. Then you will better know what you need and want. To use two flashes with the Commander, they need not be identical models.

The Nikon Commander system is definitely at its best with two TTL flashes, as main and fill. (More that two flashes with the Commander system stops making sense however). And as a remote triggering system, it is line of sight, which can have issues... Seems excess overhead for one flash, except that it does provide off-camera TTL operation.

But for two TTL flashes, it individually meters and controls each one, and is truly something else again. Not for fixed studio shots, when you surely would want manual flash anyway (and a hand held flash meter, and more flashes than Commander can control).

But for any fast setup of two TTL flashes, for shoot and go type of pictures, Commander TTL is simply awesome (if the trigger works).

 

[WhiteLight]

If you do decide you need more flash units than the SB-700 can handle then just use it for one of you secondary units and buy the 910 at that time.

That makes like total sense

 

[WhiteLight]

So if one has a commander, like say a SU-800, that should take away some of the limitations of the SB700?
Like absence of Sync port, ability to have only 2 groups etc
is that right or am i way off??
In that situation, the only drawback of the 700 would be slightly lower power?

 

[Don Kuykendall_RIP]

So if one has a commander, like say a SU-800, that should take away some of the limitations of the SB700?
Like absence of Sync port, ability to have only 2 groups etc
is that right or am i way off??
In that situation, the only drawback of the 700 would be slightly lower power?

Your D7000 has commander mode already.

 

[WayneF]

So if one has a commander, like say a SU-800, that should take away some of the limitations of the SB700?
Like absence of Sync port, ability to have only 2 groups etc
is that right or am i way off??
In that situation, the only drawback of the 700 would be slightly lower power?

SB-700 has a commander, but only for two remote groups. The internal flash commanders are only two remote groups also. Technically they have three groups, if including the builtin flash too - but only two remote groups. SU-800, SB-900/910, and SB-800 commanders have three remote groups, plus any builtin local flash group, if applicable.

SU-800 does not add a sync port. A PC Sync port is for basic manual flash only anyway - iTTL is not possible and commander is not possible. Any remote iTTL requires a commander. Commander has to be on the camera (or connected via a hot shoe extension cord).

It is can be argued that use of a $330 flash on-camera as a commander is less a bargain than using a $250 SU-800. Sort of wastes a flash, in that on-camera is not really where you want a flash to be. SU-800 uses invisible infrared commands, which is good (helps blinking), but there is a lot of bargain to be had with a free internal flash as commander (actually, internal commander has a bit more range than the infrared filtered SU-800). But... visible commands cause blinking.

Note that adding any commander to a camera body without commander - does NOT add the FV LOCK feature to the camera, present in models with commander. FV LOCK prevents photos of the subject blinking from the commander flashes. This is a very serious issue. The invisible infrared SU-800 does help that very greatly (no visible commander flashing in subjects face), but the TTL remotes still do preflashes. FV Lock does all this before the shutter, and gets the blinking over with, saves the metering info, and then can do the shutter alone (no more commands or preflashes or blinking) at the subsequent shutter buttons. FV Lock is normally vital.

There is a writeup about commander at Using the Nikon CLS Remote Wireless Flash System

 

[WhiteLight]

Something i came across on the web:

Nikon SB-700 Advantages	Nikon SB-900 Advantages
40% increases in minimum number of flashes with Ni-MH (230 vs 165)	More powerful
Smaller & lighter	PC Sync Socket
Much better intelligent thermal protection (more continuous shooting ability)	Full-featured CLS control
User interface w/ more dedicated controls	External power option
Cheaper
Hard color filters for fluorescent and tungsten lighting
Faster recycling time with Alkaline batteries (2.5s vs 4.0s)

Not much to choose from between the SB-910 & SB-900..
If anyone would like to know -

In the press release Nikon mentioned only two SB-910 improvements over the SB-900:

• the SB-910 provides more efficient battery usage as well as an enhanced Thermal Cut-Out function
• the SB-910 uses new hard-type color compensation filters for fluorescent and incandescent color temperature balancing

Source: http://nikonrumors.com/2011/11/30/nikon-sb-900-vs-sb-910-speedlight-comparison.aspx/#ixzz2XvLtwa1Y
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