Peter's Blog

Since I have been doing predominantly cameo photos with my Nikon D80 DSLR and I intend to do proper posed family portraits with it I decided I would like a decent flash gun to get better lighting. The built in flash is ok but typically the background of the subject is dark and the subject itself looks flat. The solution would be a flash gun, something that could bounce more powerful flash off the walls/ceiling for nice diffuse lighting.

I decided upon the Nikon SB600 SpeedLight since it would work best with the Nikon camera. Amongst it's many features are the following that are useful to me:

• The flash can be fully automatic and controlled by the camera using Nikons iTTL system.
• The flash can be rotated through 270 degrees and tilted through 90. You can put it on the camera, aim the camera down at sleeping baby and bounce the flash off the ceiling above you.
• It comes with a little stand so you can also set it up remotely. The camera's built in flash the provides direct lighting and the remote flash provides fill-in light.

Here is a photo using the built-in flash:

cute baby but flat. Mum is wearing a dark brown top.

Here is a photo using the SB600:

Is it the same baby? This one is three dimensional, she has a furrowed brow. The flash was mounted on the camera and bounced off the ceiling.

I got a good deal on the flash from Clifton Cameras for £175 (Jessops = £217.99). This price included the flash and these free goodies:

• a Nikon lens cleaning brush
• a wireless remote control for when I have to include myself in family portraits
• a CD on how to use my Nikon D70 which might help me with my D80
• a diffuser: expands to about a foot diameter, shiny one side, white the other. I'll have to figure out what to do with this e.g. how to hold it while taking photos.

The flash is quite big, and taking four aa batteries makes it heavy. Mounted on top of the camera it feels a bit fragile as if it would be too easy to snap it off. Also makes the camera top heavy. The whole setup seems rather delicate.

Using the P mode on the camera (semi automatic), when you take a snap the flash does a series of pre-flashes to test the lighting before taking the photo proper. The whole thing takes a couple of seconds which is annoying if the subject moves (the main reason I got the D80 was to be able to catch fast moving toddlers). In fully auto mode it doesn't do this for some reason. There is also a flash lock facility so I may be able to take one photo, lock the flash settings and take subsequent photo's instantly.

More examples:

Been taking many photo's with the Nikon D80. It is a very good camera. I've only just had to recharge it since my daughter was born on wednesday morning, five days of intensive photography, mostly flash, maybe two hundred photos. Twice as many daughters to take photos of!

What makes it so good is the speed that you can frame a photo with the zoom and take the photo. It focuses in low-light situations where my old canon would have given up. I don't think the Canon could have caught this:

Flickr stream: http://www.flickr.com/pinkblob

Recently taking photos with my Canon Powershot S1 IS I had become frustrated at how long it took to focus on fast moving toddler daughter. I felt I was missing lots of good pictures. Also there is an imminent arrival that I want to take pictures of.

Latest overindulgence: Nikon D80 camera with 18-135mm lens. This is a DSLR, a cut above the powershot.

I spent a while torn between this and the cheaper Canon EOS400D. My research told me:

• Canon was cheaper
• the Nikon had more things to fiddle with
• it came with better lenses in the kit
• Nikon has better build quality
• the canon had better windows software but since I can just plug the SD card into my monitor and get the photos with Picasa I'm not sure I need it anyway.

Final clincher for me was looking at the two in the shop: the canon reminded me of the powershot, the Nikon was more sexy.

Good things:

• Very fast: focuses and takes photo so fast you wonder what has happened
• Very easy to use: wife took photo of me and daughter with no assistance. It focuses and takes the photo before your fake smile has time to harden (NOT uploading it here: makes me look old). End up taking endless photo's, all very good.
• 10 Megapixels: fine quality jpegs come out at about 3Mb. High resolution, crisp photos. Can see every hair.
• something I never appreciated about DSLR's: because they have real lenses, you zoom and focus manually by twisting the rings on the lens. This is MUCH better than fiddling with +/- buttons. Your left hand is holding it by the zoom ring. UPDATE: clarification, it does have auto focus but you can set it to manual and adjust it with a ring on the lens. The 'in-focus' status light even comes on when you have it right.

Bad things:

• big
• didn't buy a camera bag, now feel it needs something soft to carry it around in as it is so precious.
• it has a light to help auto-focus in the dark but it is obscured by the lens which sticks out about six inches most of the time
• no video: DSLR's don't do this. It was handy on the powershot.
• When I say easy to use, that's in the default auto mode. Everything can be overridden. The manual is not very explicit, it doesn't explain things very well. Still this makes it interesting, it's a challenge and a learning curve.
• Lens when zoomed is too phallic. Ok when set to wide angle.
• To my eye the flash shots seem a bit dark. Easily fixed in Picasa, in camera I think it can only be fixed in manual mode but not sure. UPDATE: in manual mode you can adjust the brightness, you can even set it to bracket, e.g. take three pictures at three different flash levels (it doesn't take the three automatically, bang-bang-bang, you have to trigger it three times and it alters the level each time).

See following examples for:

• dull flash
• capturing toddler in mid-cuteness.

Conclusion: very good camera.