More new gear!
Last night I went to my local photography store.. where apparently I was so excited I left my keys in my car! I called roadside assistance that I get with my mobile phone, and then headed off to the store to look at flash units for my Nikon D80.
Up till now I’ve been using an Olympus FL-36 flash for my olympus rig. the flash itself fires and works with the Nikon system as you would expect in manual mode. But I’ve found that the power has become really unreliable. It’ll fire at full power and then jump to 1/64 then 1/4 then 1/32. I don’t know why but it happens even when it’s put on the Olympus rig. It may have something to do with differing voltages between the cameras or there could an ant running around in the circuitry of the unit. who knows!
Nikon SB-600 Speedlight
So I decided it was time to get a new flash, preferably one the works with my Nikon D80. So I picked up the Nikon SB600. If your interested in a proper review check out Ken Rockwell’s site. Last night when I got home I played with the flash for a bit and I have to say that I really like it so far. I almost bought the SB400 because of the price point. After talking about the differences between to 400 and the 600 I realized that the 400 was going to be underpowered for what I needed. So a great job in the upsell to the sales guy!
I’m actually very happy that I bought the SB600. Last night as I played with it for a bit, I found that it does a great job as a wireless off-camera slave! I may just end up using off camera exclusively. I normally don’t shoot with flash because I don’t like the way it looks but up until now it’s always been a camera mounted flash. Now I have the option to get the flash off the camera which could change my mind about additional light.
Later today I have an outdoor shoot so I’ll play around with using the off camera flash outdoors and see what I get!
P.S. The roadside assistance guy was very cool and turned out to be a fellow photographer! I’ll be making a spare door key for my car today as well!
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