Nikon4794 SU-800 Wireless Speedlight Commander

I have a Nikon D600 and so can fire off my CLS off camera flashes using the built in remote. However, practical experience, even with limiting the internal flash firing, was that I was causing my subjects to blink - especially children. After much searching, including remote triggers, radio triggers etc, I decided to plump for the SU-800. Not only do I like keeping my kit all Nikon branded, I also have found this the best to suit my needs.It's light, so doesn't add too much weight to the camera body. Secondly, it also helps with autofocusing in lower light conditions. Thirdly, it's a very convenient way to control power of the remote flashes. I use it to fire two off camera SB700 flash units and I mainly use this system for portraiture at people's homes. It's quite pricy considering the other options available, but the ability to control power of the flashes from the unit, the additional autofocusing capabilities and it's performance indoors has made it a worthwhile purchase for me.It's worth noting that this does suffer some performance issues outdoors in bright light. Outdoors in bright light, I would still chose to fire my remote flashes from the internal commander of the D600 - as this reduces the risk of misfiring. Indoors however, it's proved invaluable. Reducing the blinking risk and enabling me to be more fluid in my workflow from behind the camera (once the off-camera flashes have been placed, of course!). Great product, a little plasticy - but this does help in being lightweight, which is what you want when attached to the camera body. Overall, very pleased and a recommended purchase for anyone developing their creative lighting system.

My new Nikon D850 doesn't have a built-in flash. To trigger off-camera flash I need to put another flash on the hot shoe or use a remote trigger like this. This one is optical and it works well indoors. I have heard that optical triggers don't work so well outdoors. In that case you should investigate radio triggers instead. This one is part of Nikon's Creative Lighting System (CLS). It can control up to three banks of speedlights. I am very happy with it.

I use this speed light as a commander on my Nikon D3200. It works a treat. the only gripe I have is that I received a French version of the users manual but I don't speak French. so had to use the online manual instead. Other than that, I would highly recommend this speed light.

Very good

It does what its supposed to and will control numerous speed lights, but there are cheaper options of getting multi flash effects.The advantage of using Nikon is the SU-800 will work TTL. If you use cheaper slave flashes you lose the TTL option , but with a little practice you will soon get the exposure right with the manual settings !!

I have been a long-time advocate of the Nikon CLS flash lighting system, and find its ability to painlessly light a scene using multiple off-camera flashes to be a real help, especially in ad-hoc shooting situations. This is never more so where time is at a premium, and you don't have the ability to wander around endlessly manually updating power levels on individual flashes. Of course, you can stick an SB-800 or SB-900 on top of the camera to act as a master flash (which is really a waste of a flash), or you can use the built-in flash on a supporting camera body. However, I find that the preflash of the flash on camera tends to make a portrait subject blink at just the wrong second before the main exposure is made, giving you squinting subjects as often as not. Not ideal. It is because of this that I finally decided to purchase an SU-800. Not only does it communicate with the remote flashes using an almost invisible infra-red signal, but it also has a built in focus assist lamp, which is much less bright than the white light a camera body emits, again making the subject much less likely to blink at the wrong moment. With the SU-800, you can control the output of up to 3 separate banks of Nikon flashes without moving from the spot, either in CLS or manual modes. This is to me preferable to the alternative of using Pocket Wizards, which require the flashes to be individually adjusted by hand. The only limitation with the SU-800 is that it requires that the remote flashes can 'see' the infra-red signal, which really means shooting indoors in an enclosed environment, or having the remote flashes in a fairly close proximity outdoors. Being radio driven would remove this limitation, but flashes do tend to emit a lot of electronic noise, so introducing radio control as part of a TTL metering based flash system is not a trivial, as Pocket Wizard have recently found to their cost with their new Canon TTL based system. Given the range limitation, the SU-800 is an excellent solution to off camera remote flash with full CLS support. Its only flaw is a relatively limited range, so 4 points. Highly recommended.

Yes, I know I'm going to get slated for this review, but I sent it back because it had a French manual and that is not good enough for me (I am English and purchased this in the UK).That makes this item (as far as I'm concerned) a foreign import, in other words a Grey Import - which is frowned upon by Nikon who will NOT honour guarantees.Shame on you Amazon !