Daspar Designs Blog

It is necessity and not pleasure that compels us.
Dante (Inferno XXI, 87)

My first lesson in a seminar for my brand new D300 (up until this time, I was shooting with my D70). The D300 offers many more options, and in different place then the D70. I figured a good class would be a great way of learninga bout my camera as the manuals tend to be a bit…dry. In the class the questions were flying, the class was fast paced. It moved around from subject to subject faster then the slides could go. Surprisingly, I was able to follow most of it, and became lost in the quick tide of excitement of getting to actually know what my camera was capable of. Of all the things I wanted to learn about my camera was how to trigger a remote flash (TTL mode) using the camera without triggering the flash on the camera itself. I had a feeling this could be done. Somewhere in the course of the seminar that question was asked but never answered. There was a lot going on, so I just swam with the flow.

In my second class on how to learn about my camera, pt2…I was determined that if there were only two things I wanted to get out of it, was to find out how to trigger that remote flash, and if I was lucky, how to set a white balance from either a picture or from a grey card. I found out many things during that class, but not the answers to those two questions. I’ll admit, I was late for the class, so the white balance trick was over before I got there. However, the instructor told me that there was no way to achieve what I wanted on the Nikkon D300 without purchasing a 300 dollar accessory. This was not good news. Something in my mind told me that this could not be so. I already have a wireless remote trigger for my camera which helps me work with two studio lights. I did not think I would need such a thing for this camera.

For once I was right. You can do what I wanted to do. The D300 can trigger a flash (say the SB – 600 or the SB – 800) remotely, using the pop up flash without firing itself. The instructor was close, he did set it up the right way, but everyone was fooled with the fact that the pop up flash looks like it fires. The pop up flashes a preflash, and a low intensity flash which contains a IR pulse. It is this IR pulse which triggers your remote flash.

The reasons you would want to do this might not seem obvious. But for the same reasons in the studio where I want to take a photo of a subject without firing the flash off in their face, I wanted to do with a much more portable set up. Two Speedlights, some diffusers, and my camera all fit quite comfortably in a backpack.

Here’s how:

1. Set up your remote flashes to remote flash. On the SB 600 this is achieved by pressing and holding the zoom and ‘-’ button when that starts flashing you will see an arrow in a backwards S shape with the word ON above it – at this point press mode to set, and on the SB 800 press the set button, then scroll down to remote (apparently life is even easier with the SB900, I’ve wanted to take my SB600 and fling it a few times out of menu-induced-frustration).

2. Remember which channel and group your flashes are on (CH1, Group A is the default).

3. Turn on your D300 and go to menu.

4. Scroll down to “Custom Setting Menu” and highlight ‘e Bracketing/flash‘, once there go to e3 Flash cntrl for built-in flash

5. In e3, scroll down to Commander Mode

6. In Commander mode you will notice ‘Built in flash, Group A and Group B” on the right side with corresponding Mode column. The mode column offers you three options: M, TTL, and –

7. Set the Built in flash to – - (- – is Nikkon’s speak for off)

8. Set the flashes you have set up (say in Group A) to TTL

9. Pat yourself on the back and go snap some shots!

If you’ve borrowed your favorite family member to pose for you they will quickly tell you that the camera flash did go off. You might even notice that they’ve blinked in a few of the shots. This is the pre-flash and the very minimal flash that is firing. If you’ve got proper lighting and are not doing close up work, you will not notice the effect of the flash. If however, you do notice closed eyes from the flash that you may not want, then you have to figure out some way of minimizing that pre-flash. There are two ways of fixing this. One is to use an old-blacked out film negative. This will allow the IR to trigger the remote flash without the white light you can see going off. I, however, haven’t seen a piece of blacked out film negative for twenty years. The other alternative, is to purchase the SG-31R. This is only about 13 dollars, so shouldn’t set you back too much.

One question down…now one more to go. Now where is that white balance thing…