Nikon D700 - Off Camera Flash Firing

trev wilson

trev wilson

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Hi
Ive just purchased a D700 to go with my D3 for Weddings. I wanted to use it in the non firing commander flash mode to fire my SB900 off camera on a stand which it is doing fine BUT:

Ive followed the manual over and over again, set the SB900 to remote mode, custom setting on D700 to Commander mode and selected the two little dashes to which should mean "pop up flash as none firing" as I only want the SB900 to fire but the pop up flash keeps firing at same time as SB900.

Is it something strikingly stupid that im not doing correct ? Ive set it up over and over again followed the manual instruction to the letter and yet the pop flash still fires..

Can anyone point out the glaring mistake Im making please ?
 
The onboard flash needs to fire to trigger the SB900, in theory by setting it to "--" it shouldn't be poweful enough to contribute to the overall exposure though.
 
The pop up shouldn't really contribute to the exposure but I find that sometimes it still does. You can get a SG-3IR panel which blocks the flash but allows the IR signals to still be transmitted.
 
I wonder if what you are talking about is the pre-flash. That always fires, as it must because it's transmitting the commander data by visible light. That's how remote iTTL works.
 
I agree with Hoppy, the on board flash is the trigger for the sb900, to prove this take a picture with the flash covered by your hand and the sb900 will not fire.

It looks like but they are firing at the same time but they are not.

Mac
 
HoppyUK said:
It does. The OP is using a D700 camera as commander, which is visible light only.

The SU-800 commander is semi-IR.
Click to expand...

Nope, the SB900 only uses the ir portion of the flash from the D700 to trigger (unless he's triggering it in SU-4 "slave" mode), hence the optional SG3-IR panel, which blocks the visible light emitted by said onboard flash.

How can the SU800 be "semi-ir"? Are you saying it emits a visible flash to trigger the speedlight? How?
 
Flash In The Pan said:
Nope, the SB900 only uses the ir portion of the flash from the D700 to trigger (unless he's triggering it in SU-4 "slave" mode), hence the optional SG3-IR panel, which blocks the visible light emitted by said onboard flash.

How can the SU800 be "semi-ir"? Are you saying it emits a visible flash to trigger the speedlight? How?
Click to expand...

The D700 sends its command signals by visible light. The IR component of that might be the important bit, but it's integral to the visible part. Unless you filter it out with the IR panel.

And anyway it is only semi-IR because flash guns don't emit much true IR and a little visible red light has to be added to give it enough range. Hence you can still just see the 'semi-IR' of the SU-800 when it fires.
 
HoppyUK said:
It does. The OP is using a D700 camera as commander, which is visible light only.
Click to expand...

HoppyUK said:
The D700 sends its command signals by visible light. The IR component of that might be the important bit, but it's integral to the visible part. Unless you filter it out with the IR panel.
Click to expand...

That, my friend, is what's known as a contradiction in terms ;)

And anyway it is only semi-IR because flash guns don't emit much true IR and a little visible red light has to be added to give it enough range. Hence you can still just see the 'semi-IR' of the SU-800 when it fires.
Click to expand...

No you can't....
 
I wonder which pedant will win this little war of words........:lol::lol::lol:
 
fracster said:
I wonder which pedant will win this little war of words........:lol::lol::lol:
Click to expand...

Want to join in Ade? ;)

In relation to the OP, the way I read it is that he thinks he's disabled the on-camera flash not realising how it sends command codes to the remote unit.

Which it does with the pre-flash. And that is very visible :shrug:
 
Good God, no thanks mate, you two are way out of my league.......;)


:D
 
Thanks for the replies guys. It did dawn on me that the flash from the camera was the signal to fire the SB900, just got confused because the manual states the on board flash would not fire.
And assuming I'm not to close to subject it will not be powerful enough to effect the image/exposure.
 
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