Doug’s World

SB600 Wireless Flash

I spent some time today cleaning my Nikon D70 and lenses, getting ready for the week ahead. I moved out of the small camera bag and into one of my bigger ones, a black tattered Lowepro that I’ve had since February of 1999.

I also set up an SB600 flash for wireless use. This is a very powerful technique: once you have it set up, you just set the flash to point at your subject and fire away. Here’s an example of what you can do, with no thinking, no details, just point and shoot.

Anyway, the following is a summary of D70/SB600 wireless info, for my own reference and also for the reference of all my friends who have D70s. Nic, Greg, Mauricio, Kit Kai, and everyone else who has a D70, if you haven’t played with wireless flash check this out. The SB600 is a great deal, and in stock in Seattle this week at Glazier’s Camera for $199, or $185 from Adorama. I also have an SB800, but it doesn’t handle the wireless mode as easily as the SB600. (At least in my experience — if you have a D70/SB800 and disagree, please let me know how to do this with the SB800.)

Setting up the Camera

Shooting Mode. My D70 is nearly always in Program mode: auto-everything, but you can over-ride various settings easily. The procedure below works in Program, Shutter, Aperture, or Manual shooting mode.

Full-Detail Menus. These instructions assume you have the full-detail menus turned on. The setting is CSM MENU, and it’s under the yellow wrench icon in the D70 menu system. That must be set to DETAILED, or you won’t see some of the things described below.

• Press the Menu button, scroll to the purple pencil, then go to #19, “CSM Menu.” Set this to “Commander mode,” and select “TTL” within that option.
• Click on the built-in flash button so that it pops up. This is important — the wireless mode won’t work if the flash isn’t popped up!

Setting up the Flash

Here are the steps to set up the SB600 flash to work in wireless mode with your D70:

• Press the ZOOM and “-” buttons at the same time, and hold them for a second to enter the CSM settings.
• Press the “+” button until you see the Z-shaped arrow, then press MODE until it shows “ON.”
• Tap the power button to exit CSM mode.

After you follow these steps, you’ll see the display shown here on your SB600 flash. You’re ready to shoot with wireless flash — just set up the flash to point at your subject, and fire away. The exposure is automatically calculated “through the lens” in TTL mode, and you can concentrate on the picture you want to take, while ignoring the complicated details.

Reverting to Normal Mode

After you set the settings described above, the ONLY thing you can do with flash is take wireless flash shots with your SB600. You can take no-flash shots just fine, but if you want to take a “normal” flash shot with your D70’s built-in flash, or with your SB600 mounted on the camera, you need to un-do everything and set it back to normal flash mode. Here’s how to do that …

• On the D70, go to CSM setting setting #19, Flash Mode, and set it to TTL. (Not Command mode, but the Flash Mode setting itself!)
• On the SB-600, go back to the Z-shaped arrow (see above), and set it to OFF.

I first learned these techniques at KenRockwell.com, a great site for Nikon camera users. Here’s the page that covers SB600 flash technique.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 23rd, 2006 at 9:36 pm. You can subscribe to comments on this post through its RSS feed.