Nikon SB-910 Speedlight Unit

Product Information

When I need more than one flash for serious lighting, I don't bother with these battery-powered things and use real studio strobes, which cost less and work so much better. I use the discontinued SB-400 for fill-flash all the time in all of my DSLRs. I don't need or want to carry anything bigger. Just under the flash unit's LCD is a row of four buttons. Icons at the bottom of the LCD change to indicate what you control with these buttons. You can repeatedly press a button to get to new settings, or you can press the button and then use the control wheel to get a specific setting faster. On the other hand, one performance aspect is clearly improved and its a doozey: flash recycling is rated as 50-90% faster than before. I actually tried this with some nearly dead batteries--which usually represent the worst case for recycling--and was surprised to still see a major difference between my SB-800 and SB-900. With newly charged Nimh recyclable batteries, the stated claim of 2.3 seconds was nearly met in my testing, and I was getting almost exactly a 100% speed boost when I moved those batteries from the SB-800 to the SB-900. That's with four batteries. Essentially, the SB-900 recycles with four batteries about as fast as the SB-800 does with five. Nice. No more battery wart on the side of my flash! Introduced November 2011, the SB-910 is Nikon's top professional flash. It is the biggest, fastest, brightest and most feature-laden flash they make. The SB-910 is an update to the short-lived SB-900, and adds hard plastic color-correction filters to replace the wimpy gels of the SB-900.

After some preliminary use, I don't think there's any doubt: get an SB-900 if you're heavy into flash (and retire your SB-800 to dedicated remote wireless use). Things that are new or changed over the SB-800: Non-TTL "Auto aperture" Auto mode: the SB-910 is smart enough to read the ISO and set aperture from your camera, and then uses its own sensor to set the exposure. WG-AS1, WG-AS2 and WG-AS3 water guards. Depending on which camera you're using, these things try to seal the camera's hot shoe from water when using this flash. This professional SB-910 is aimed at full-time sports and news shooters who need as much power as fast as possible, and are bouncing it, using diffusers, and shooting at much longer distances than the rest of us shoot our family photos. Personally, I prefer the tiny Nikon SB-400 since I want a small flash for use as fill-flash, and velcro my own gels over the flash as needed. SB-900 is a larger professional model released 30 June 2008, weighs approximately 415g. It is a flash made by Nikon for their digital and film single-lens reflex cameras, released on June 30, 2008. It has electronic interfaces for through-the-lens (TTL) automatic exposure and automatic zoom to match lens focal lengths from 17 to 200mm (35mm equivalent) and 12 to 200mm in Nikon DX Format. Over SB-800, SB-900 features:The Nikon SB-500 is a lightweight and very compact shoe-mount flash unit with coverage for a 24mm lens on an FX camera or a 16mm lens on DX camera and combined with 100 lux LED for video light, powered by only two AA-size batteries. SB-500 is a very capable flash with a variable angle 'bounce' head (up to 90°) and rotates 180° for soft lighting effects. The flash is part of Nikon's Creative Lighting System (CLS) with two-group/two-channel control and features the intelligent-TTL (i-TTL) exposure mode. [1] SB-600 (discontinued) [ edit ] Lots of little touches that are a modest step forward. Faster recycling, better swivel, dedicated gel holder that impacts white balance correctly, the list of little things that were added or improved is quite long.

Speedlight is the brand name used by Nikon Corporation for their photographic flash units, used since the company's introduction of strobe flashes in the 1960s. Nikon's standalone Speedlights (those not built into the company's cameras) have the SB- prefix as part of their model designation. Current Speedlights and other Nikon accessories make up part of Nikon's Creative Lighting System (CLS), which includes the Advanced Wireless Lighting, that enables various Nikon cameras to control multiple Nikon flash units in up to three separate controlled groups by sending encoded pre-flash signals to slave units. These are the number of full-power dumps Nikon claims you can get if you wait as long as 30 seconds for it to recycle. In actual automatic use, you'll get thousands of flashes depending on your distance, since less power is used for each pop. The Nikon SB-600 is a flash made by Nikon for their digital and film single-lens reflex cameras. The SB-600 can mount to any Nikon camera with a four-prong hotshoe. The SB-600 cannot control other flashes through a wireless connection; however, a flash commander can control it wirelessly. The SB-600 is part of Nikon's Creative Lighting System (CLS) and features the intelligent-TTL (i-TTL) exposure mode. This model is the most compatible unit with older model film and earlier digital cameras like Nikon, F5, F6, and D100 as well as all recent cameras. Best flash interface yet. Tiny quibbles aside, Nikon nailed the controls. Faster to set, easier to set, easier to understand how it's set. Bingo.The Nikon SB-400 is another very basic flash unit. It is very similar to the SB-300, except it only allows the head to be tilted 90 degrees upwards (which is pretty limiting). It also won’t work in master/commander or slave/remote modes. Just like the SB-300, it cannot rotate side to side either, making it impossible to bounce the light off walls and other vertical surfaces, unless the camera is positioned in a vertical orientation. The SB-400 has a faster recycle time than the SB-300, lasts longer and is slightly larger in size. Nikon’s i-TTL is also fully supported, except for High Speed Sync and AF Assist. The Nikon SB-400 has been discontinued, so your only option is to buy it used. There is an excellent basic guide of how to take various kinds of pictures, as well as the larger manual that's mostly legal notices. Getting a bit bulky. In every dimension the new flash is a bit bigger. Make more room in your case. The SB-900 is part of Nikon's Creative Lighting System (CLS) and features the intelligent-TTL (i-TTL) exposure mode. With compatible SLR cameras (such as the D40, D40x, D50, D60, D70, D70s, D80, D5000, D90, D200, D300, D700, D7000, D2h, D2hs, D2x, D2xs, D3, D3x and F6) can be used as master commander as well as remote flash unit within a CLS wireless lighting setup.