Nikon SB800 - do they overheat?

nope - never a problem. never had a problem with the SB-900 either.
 
Yes...they can overheat, but only if you fire them repeatedly at full power dozens and dozens of times in a row without letting the flash cool down.

The samecan be said of any flashgun though, except perhaps the SB-900 which has a thermal cut-off switch, but that in itself can cause problems as they can be a bit over-sensitive :bang:........
 
No overheateing problems here either. I have had SB800s for years, since they came out and they get used virtually on a daily basis, never been back. Brilliant tools. The 900s are hardly run in yet! They seem every bit as reliable and I haven't had the thermal cut out cut in on them either.

To overheat them you must really be going to town and not having any thinking time or pauses between set ups and just machine-gunning for scores of frames. Even just a couple of minutes while you rejig something gives thema chance to cool down.
 
I haven't had a problem with mine either but I have not really hammered it.
 
Flash In The Pan said:
except perhaps the SB-900 which has a thermal cut-off switch, but that in itself can cause problems as they can be a bit over-sensitive :bang:........
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Yep... just had my first cut out on the SB-900! I was shooting some award presentations of about 20 'awardees' in very quick succession, about four shots of each. THe SB-900 gave up at about number 18 (so I guess around 70-80 shots) :thumbsdown:. Quickly whacked up the ISO for the last couple and shot without flash... came out OK too, thank goodness for the D3's awesome high ISO ability!
 
Never had a problem with the SB-800's but the 900 cuts out quite a lot, especially when using the fast sync facility of CLS. Guessing the SB-800 would too in this situation if it had the thermal cut-off.
 
Flashman said:
Yep... just had my first cut out on the SB-900! I was shooting some award presentations of about 20 'awardees' in very quick succession, about four shots of each. THe SB-900 gave up at about number 18 (so I guess around 70-80 shots) :thumbsdown:. Quickly whacked up the ISO for the last couple and shot without flash... came out OK too, thank goodness for the D3's awesome high ISO ability!
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I've got two of them, if they're both at the same settings and being used together one will cut out quite a bit before t'other. It's not that the flash is actually overheating, but rather that it's set too sensitive. It doesn't really bother me, although I think I read something about a firmware update for the SB-900, so it's probably easy enough to sort :shrug:
 
What do you call prolonged use?
For a Canon if you use it in continues mode for say 20 shots full power it need a rest, before doing that again. If you think of the light output and the heat it will produce ( all energy ends up as heat)
 
My sb900 sounds the alarm quite often, suprised me as I wasn't shooting at that higher power or continually. Think the thermal cut-off is a bit too sensitive.
 
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