Nikon SB600 vs SB900

[weeds]

Hi all,

I am looking round for a flash solution to complement my macro photography. At present I am using the Nikkor 105mm Micro and either taking pictures in the day light or using a light tent and trying to light the subject with a standard desk lamp.

I recently went to a Macro Photography course night and we got to play with a number of differrent set ups. My initial goal was to purchase the Nikon R1C1 or the R1 macro flash kit.

Whilst there I had a bumble around with a Nikon SB800 and slaved it wirelessly to my D90 and used it to light up my subject from different angles through various forms of diffusers. Needless to say that the result was excellent. I have decided now to steer clear of the R1C1 etc as I can use an external speedlight flash as a main flash for portraits etc.

The question I have now is do I buy the SB600 or fork out the extra green for the SB900?

Is it worth buying the SB900 over the SB600 seeing that its mainly going to be for macro work and portraits? Do I need the extra power? What are the differences?

Your thoughts please.

[Don Hoey]

My view is the simple answer is SB-900 or a used SB-800 to save a few dollars.
I am older technology, so my choice was between SB-80DX ( replaced by the SB-800 ) or SB-50 ( replaced by SB-600 ).

No contest and I got the SB80-DX.

When considering flash power GN, remember what you are doing today will likely expand in other directions often requiring more power. For example you mention portrature, so if you get a brolly that will immediately cost one stop plus of light depending on it reflectivity. Shoot through it and that will be 2 stops loss and so it goes on.

I believe you can NEVER have too much power with flash.

Don

[yelvertoft]

Originally Posted by Don Hoey

I believe you can NEVER have too much power with flash.

Agree completely. Was even wondering if I had room to store a 400W studio head somewhere when it wouldn't be in use (most of the time) the other day.

[andy153]

Or have you considered the R1C1 with multiple SB-R200's? I have this kit with three flash heads. It complements my SB-600 & SB-800 and is very versatile - you can use it as a ring flash or remote flash for portraits. There have been some complaints that the SB-900 is overly complicated, and I find the SB-800 complex enough. If you camera has the I-TTL metering it helps a lot.

[Don Hoey]

Originally Posted by andy153

...... There have been some complaints that the SB-900 is overly complicated, and I find the SB-800 complex enough. If you camera has the I-TTL metering it helps a lot.

I guess it depends on how complicated you want to get by addng more flash units, setting up commander mode etc. My SB80-DX has a 105 page manual and I probably found only 10 of those pages relavent to what I do.
For casual snaps I set it in iTTL and fire away. It and the camera do the exposure thinking, and for anything else, it is set to manual. I'd probably fry my brain if I actually read the book.

All the current Nikon cameras use iTTL which is pretty foolproof. So probably only 5 pages of the book need reading to cover that before starting to use it.

Don

[andy153]

Hi Don, the SB-900 manual has 142 pages, I got my headache at page 10 . Interesting difference between the two shots, of course, IR & UV flashes are used to expose things not visible to the human eye in forensics, especially after various reagents have been added to the subject.

[weeds]

Originally Posted by andy153

Or have you considered the R1C1 with multiple SB-R200's? I have this kit with three flash heads. It complements my SB-600 & SB-800 and is very versatile - you can use it as a ring flash or remote flash for portraits. There have been some complaints that the SB-900 is overly complicated, and I find the SB-800 complex enough. If you camera has the I-TTL metering it helps a lot.

Hi Andy,

The R1C1 was my original choice but I learnt that its used with cameras that don't have a built in flash. The R1 is designed to be used with cameras that have a built in flash (I'm running a D90 at the moment). The R1 is for macro only and cannot be used as an all purpose flash. I discovered that I could slave SB-600s off my D90 and position them at various angles to achieve a similar effect. Does the iTTL work out the flash settings for the slave flashes on an SB600 even though its zoom head only goes to 85mm and I'm running a 105mm Micro? Or would I have to adjust the flash compensation manually?

I'll post my first efforts using just 1 SB600 diffused through a light cube in the next couple of days

[Don Hoey]

Originally Posted by weeds

.......... Does the iTTL work out the flash settings for the slave flashes on an SB600 even though its zoom head only goes to 85mm and I'm running a 105mm Micro? Or would I have to adjust the flash compensation manually?

Not having any of these newer units I cannot be much help on this score. I guess from a straight exposure viewpoint iTTL can cover correct exposure. If you are wanting to get creative I think remote units will be on a mix of iTTL and manual.

The amount of zoom you mention for use with your 105mm Micro is only really critical at longer ranges. With the D90 you will hit the diffraction limit by f13. That means fine detail will gradually get more smeared as you stop down below that. If you use any sort of diffuser you really want the max light spread, so the zoom should be at its widest setting, and preferably fit a Stofen style diffuser to max that. There is shed loads of info on diffusion in this forum to help in explaining it without resorting to the use of light cubes. For my most recent post in the IR on the CHEAP thread, the lenses were taken with one off camera flash - SB80-DX fitted with a Stofen diffuser set to 1/2 power, - fired through a reflector to act as a diffuser, and one polystyrene reflector to relieve shadows.
Exposure was manual, ISO100 at f11, and lens used was 55 micro at a distance of around 30 inches.

So whatever flashgun you get I sugest you really get to understand what you can do with that one, before looking at multiple units.

As a side question for Andy that may be relavent, if you later on go for multi units. Does the SB600 work in Commander Mode or will an SU-800 be required to do that ? Andy could also confirm my thought that SB800 can act as a Commander without necessarily requiring the SU-800, as long as the flash is connected to the camera with SC-28 or SC-29 cables

Don

[Don Hoey]

Too windy and cloudy for me to have a play with IR at the moment, so I thought I should maybe keep abreast of all this modern technology. I have downloaded the instructions for SB600, SB800 and SB-900.
A quick scan through shows :- Quote from the SB-600 instruction manual section about Advanced Wireless Lighting ( page 60 ) -
" The SB-600 can be used as a remote flash unit only. " So you would need to buy an SU-4 Slave Controller for wireless control of multiple units.

Page 84 of the SB-800 manual suggests setting the unit to SU-4 mode in its custom settings. Effectively 'Commander' mode.
Page D39 of the SB-900 manual says SU-4 type wireless flash operations are available through the custom settings. That seems to be the same as the SB-800 which it replaces.

So there are differences other than power to justify the price difference between SB-600 and SB-800/900.

In fact reading all this if I was in a similar position and could work without Nikons Advanced Lighting system I would also consider a Metz 58AF-1N unit similar to Duncans. This unit is compatable with D-TTL, iTTL, iTTL-remote controller/slave. Link to Metz info on the 58AF-1N
http://www.metzflash.co.uk/pages/metz27.htm

SB-600 is similar UK price as the Metz but the big difference is power.
SB-600 - Guide no 30
Metz58 - Guide no 58
Not sure if the Metz is available in your location though.

Don

[andy153]

Hi Weeds, Don, Don you are right, it does not matter how many flash heads you have on the R1C1 ring, I think four on camera is max, and eight off camera via cord is max, All can be controlled by the Commander unit, or by SB- 600/800/900 flash guns mounted on hot shoe.