Nikon SB 800

I have a D200 in a Subal housing. I need to replace my two older Ike 100a Substrobes. Can someone tell me why I should NOT buy one more SB800 strobe and put them in housings?

I mean, I already own one SB800. They are only $325. I haven't compared guide numbers with the other popular stuff but other than the fact that they don't look as cool, what would I be giving up? I have no problem shooting on manual so the whole TTL thing isn't really a major issue, but I imagine that it would be available with two SB800's. It certainly seems more economical to not spend $1500 on two strobes that I can only use when diving.

Any comments? I figure I must be missing something since I don't see a lot of posts praising the use of the SB800's in a housing.

Andy

I have a D200 in a Subal housing. I need to replace my two older Ike 100a Substrobes. Can someone tell me why I should NOT buy one more SB800 strobe and put them in housings?

 

....

Andy

I sure would be interested as well. For travelling it would cut some of the weight as need land strobes anyway and I do miss the ttl which gave consistently good exposure on moving subjects which I don't get with slow manual changes.

One problem seems to be often rather antiquated housing for the flash other than maybe the Fantasea or Sealux. As I understand it the camera will only work with 1 flash so the second needs to be run from that but it does give ttl.

I'm not sure that your camera will allow you to fire the two strobes at the same time unless they are connected for ttl. Check with Ryan from Reef Photo

Hi Ramapoodle,

I own and occasionally use an SB-800 housed in a Subal housing. My set-up is hard wired and used with my D70S. When used as a single strobe it is as good as anything 'out there' for macro...IMHO. It is supposed to be able to cover some wide angle lenses but I am a little sceptical...IMHO.

I have been exploring the options of using a second unit and as yet have not found a successful option. The camera will get 'confused' if you hard wire two SB-800's to it, and the unit will work as a slave system although the Subal housing severely limits the second unit's ability to "see" the first unit fire...IMHO.

You could, of course hard wire two strobes with a dual cord and use them as manual for wide angle...

Go with macro and one unit and have fun!

Bruce

I will be getting an SB800 tomorrow and using it in a Fantasea housing. It is a very powerful strobe and the i-TTL is great. You can run two in i-TTL using an optical sync cord.

Here's an article on the setup.

SB800 dual w/optical link

Jack

PS; I see you're in Seattle, drop me a line and maybe we can get together and try this out a bit.

I have a D200 in a Subal housing. I need to replace my two older Ike 100a Substrobes. Can someone tell me why I should NOT buy one more SB800 strobe and put them in housings?

 

I mean, I already own one SB800. They are only $325. I haven't compared guide numbers with the other popular stuff but other than the fact that they don't look as cool, what would I be giving up? I have no problem shooting on manual so the whole TTL thing isn't really a major issue, but I imagine that it would be available with two SB800's. It certainly seems more economical to not spend $1500 on two strobes that I can only use when diving.

 

Any comments? I figure I must be missing something since I don't see a lot of posts praising the use of the SB800's in a housing.

 

Andy

I have an SB-800 in a Sealux Housing, it is only useful for macro. It is not very powerful, if you do the calculations for the guide number UW and the angle covered you will soon find that a DS-125 is far better choice than the SB. You can not have 2 SB hardwired to the bulkheads, 1 has to be on slave mode and for that to be of any use the housing must have a clear window over the sensor [which the Sealux has]. Pricewise a DS-125 will cost you a little more than the housing for the SB-800 but is far more versatile than the SB.

The drawback of using housed strobes is that they have a much cooler colour temperature that underwater strobes and also have a lower angle of coverage.

These are disadvantages for wide angle, but not really an issue for macro shooting.

Alex

The drawback of using housed strobes is that they have a much cooler colour temperature that underwater strobes and also have a lower angle of coverage.

 

These are disadvantages for wide angle, but not really an issue for macro shooting.

 

Alex

Alex;

I'm looking at the SB800 specs and don't see the color temp listed. Do you know what it is?

Would one of the Nikon filters help? If so, which one? They have an extra kit available (SJ-1)

Or just a piece of gel inside the housing would be easy to rig. What would you suggest?

TIA,

Jack

In an effort to come to some type of iTTL solution for the Nikon D2x , I purchased two Fantasea SB-800 flash housings to go with my Aquatica housing. That was last October.

The flashes will not work correctly when hard-wired together as other posters to this site have said.

Various posters to this website had surmised that the infrared signal was too weak to pass directly through water and cause the slave unit to work as required for iTTL flash exposure on a consistent basis. At this point, some of the other posters had designed and implemented their own fibre optic solutions. A search of the Wetpixel website will show what other photographers have done.

With that information in mind, I cobbled together a quick-and-dirty fibre optic link between the two flashes by cutting the ends off a fibre optic audio cable and used a friction fit to mount the ends in two small pieces of Plexiglas.

Using a paper punch to cut two holes in two pieces of Velcro I mounted the fibre optic cable ends to the SB-800 housings adjacent to the flash tube and infrared sensor. The holes were cut in the Velcro to make sure the signal from the fibre optic cable reached the flash sensor unimpeded. Total cost including the Plexiglas scraps (given for free from a local glass dealer), and not the flash housings of course, cost roughly $17.95 CAN with the elbow grease thrown in for free by yours truly.

But, does it work?

Yes it does, however, in a (very) rough comparison to the quality and quantity of light discharged by my two Ikelite DS-200s, I find it is not the preferred option. That’s the best way I can put it. The two SB-800s in iTTL mode do not have the beam coverage or the power to light up the scene as the DS-200s do. The DS-200s also have the luxury of aiming lights built into the strobe to make strobe positioning more user friendly than the SB-800s.

Shooting macros may be the one area where the SB-800s could outshine the DS-200s (sorry for the pun!). As I am not one to shoot a lot of macros, I will leave it to others more taken with macros to shine a little more light on the subject (O.K., O.K. no more puns!).

Bottom Line: I tried them on a dive trip in November and they work in the configuration listed in the above paragraphs, but didn’t even think to bring them on two subsequent dive trips in January and February, preferring the quality and quantity of the light from my DS-200s instead. For me, the SB-800s will be another photographic tool with which to rely on, but only in a limited fashion.

I am now getting my hopes up for an-already-announce-but-never-produced-as-yet Ikelite iTTL cord for non-Ikelite housing hopefully to be produced sometime before the second coming of you know who……..

Hope that helps.

Thanks everyone for the plethora of info. As I suspected, if there weren't a lot of people using that setup there must be good reasons. I guess it's back to choosing a new dual strobe setup and that agonizing decision process. I know that Ryan at reef likes Ikelite, and everybody else likes something else also.

It ain't ever easy.

Thanks everyone.

The drawback of using housed strobes is that they have a much cooler colour temperature that underwater

 

Alex

Alex; I had a friend on Nikonians measure the color temp on a good quality meter. He measured 5500k, making them warmer than an Ike at 4800k, if I understand it all right...? Further the Flash color info is communicated with compatible Nikons (D80 & D200, probably many others) to adjust auto WB. The shots i took this weekend showed 4900k "as shot" which seems about right subtracting for our green water. Plus is is easy to add a bit of gel to warm them up inside the housing.

Yes it does, however, in a (very) rough comparison to the quality and quantity of light discharged by my two Ikelite DS-200s, I find it is not the preferred option. That’s the best way I can put it. The two SB-800s in iTTL mode do not have the beam coverage or the power to light up the scene as the DS-200s do.

I totally agree that they don't have the angle of beam/power for wide angle uses. However judging them against a top of the line huge strobe like a DS200 isn't really a fair comparison. That's a $1100-1200 strobe against about a $550 housing and strobe combination. A fairer comparison would be with 2 DS51's and I think it would be a lot closer.

Furthermore the Nikon's have bulit-in iTTL and I-TTL BK modes and well as another very cool feature called Auto FP High-Speed Sync which syncs the strobes up to the highest shutter speeds the compatible Nikon is capable of - a huge advantage for sunballs and the like.

I love my Inon z240's for W/A, but I think a housed SB800 with a Nikon is a killer combination as well. Not to mention having all the above water uses, which stretch a limited budget for many users.

Here's a couple of macros I shot this weekend first time out with the SB800 in TTL and an Inon z240 as fill.

Jack

I had a friend on Nikonians measure the color temp on a good quality meter. He measured 5500k, making them warmer than an Ike at 4800k, if I understand it all right...?

The temperature itself is warmer (more degrees) but the "look" is cooler, bluer. We tend to identify redder light as warmer when in reality is cooler (like a redish 3700k light etc..)

Furthermore the Nikon's have bulit-in iTTL and I-TTL BK modes and well as another very cool feature called Auto FP High-Speed Sync which syncs the strobes up to the highest shutter speeds the compatible Nikon is capable of - a huge advantage for sunballs and the like.

How does it really work? is it a longer flash with less power?

The temperature itself is warmer (more degrees) but the "look" is cooler, bluer. We tend to identify redder light as warmer when in reality is cooler (like a redish 3700k light etc..)

How does it really work? is it a longer flash with less power?

Not sure that I really follow you that a warmer source light is going to create a cooler color temp. "look". Light is just reflected from the source...?

As far as the Auto FP mode. Here's what Peter INova's excellent D80 e-book says:

CSM 25; Auto FP. Normally the top flash sync speed is 1/200 sec for any of the P, S, A and M exposure modes, but by enabling this and placing a Nikon SB-800/600 speedlight into the camera’s hot shoe (edit; or hardwired bulkhead), selectable shutter speeds for S and M exposure modes now can be dialed all the way up to 1/4000 sec. Faster than the proverbial speeding bullet.

 

Very high speed shutter sync settings literally cut into the flash duration, chopping out even a portion of the speedlight’s speedy blast. A full power Manual flash blast at 1/4000 sec (FP sync indicators show on the SB-unit’s display) will be about 2 stops darker than the same scene shot with a setting of 1/1000 sec.

I'll trade 2 stops for a 1/4000th sec sync! ;-)

Jack

Just for ref.

SB-800 colour temp with diffuser is (averaged from multiple readings)=6020K

SB-800 colour temp without diffuser is (averaged from multiple readings)=6075K

DS-125 colour temp with diffuser is (averaged from multiple readings)=4767K

DS-125 colour temp without diffuser is (averaged from multiple readings)=5136K

Z220S colour temp without diffuser is (averaged from multiple readings)=6339K

HART250HS (4500K reflector + diffused dome) is (averaged from multiple readings)=5094K

All values to be taken with a grain of salt...(+-150K for e.g.)

SB-800 needs 2x81B in the head to match DS-125 with diffuser but it is a good match with the Inon's...

Not sure that I really follow you that a warmer source light is going to create a cooler color temp.

Jack

Colour temperature is the actual temperature that a "black body" needs to be heated to in order to give off light. Like the filament in a light bulb.

Black bodies heated to so-called "cool" temperatures (say 3200 degrees kelvin) create light at the red end of the spectrum;

As you increase the temperature of the black body (say up to 5500 degrees kelvin) you get white light given off;

Increase the temperature further (say beyond 5500 degrees kelvin) and the light given off by the black body turns bluer.

So cool temps give warm coloured light, warm temps give cool coloured light.

Fewh.

Not sure that I really follow you that a warmer source light is going to create a cooler color temp. "look". Light is just reflected from the source...?

I guess Photovan explained it very good

About the High Speed sync I will try at home with the iTTL subtronic to see what comes out....

Alex; I had a friend on Nikonians measure the color temp on a good quality meter. He measured 5500k, making them warmer than an Ike at 4800k, if I understand it all right...? Jack

Sorry for the slow reply, Jack. Been away from my computer today.

Obviously this has been answered now. The confusion is because a low Kelvin temp of light is a warm coloured light, as Darren explained.

A cool strobe is great for macro - but less good for wide angle - particularly for longer camera to subject distances. Because the colour of the light is cooled further (to a bigger K) by passage through seawater.

Theoretically this can be overcome to some degree by using a weak warming filter. Although I have tried warming filters on INONs Z220s and the results were horrible!

The situation gets even more confusing in the RAW converter. If you use a cool coloured strobe, like a Nikon Speedlight, which produces a high Kelvin value light, then you must use a higher Temperature in Adobe Camera Raw (further right on the slider) to compensate.

Alex

Just for ref.

SB-800 colour temp with diffuser is (averaged from multiple readings)=6020K

SB-800 colour temp without diffuser is (averaged from multiple readings)=6075K

DS-125 colour temp with diffuser is (averaged from multiple readings)=4767K

DS-125 colour temp without diffuser is (averaged from multiple readings)=5136K

Z220S colour temp without diffuser is (averaged from multiple readings)=6339K

HART250HS (4500K reflector + diffused dome) is (averaged from multiple readings)=5094K

 

All values to be taken with a grain of salt...(+-150K for e.g.)

 

SB-800 needs 2x81B in the head to match DS-125 with diffuser but it is a good match with the Inon's...

Excellent info. I did get sent some lower readings from another person with a Minolta meter, but I think the relative values remain consistent. I'll try it with a bit of 81B gel.

Good to know also the Inon's, as the shots looked even that I took with the z240 as fill.

Colour temperature is the actual temperature that a "black body" needs to be heated to in order to give off light. Like the filament in a light bulb.

 

Black bodies heated to so-called "cool" temperatures (say 3200 degrees kelvin) create light at the red end of the spectrum;

 

As you increase the temperature of the black body (say up to 5500 degrees kelvin) you get white light given off;

 

Increase the temperature further (say beyond 5500 degrees kelvin) and the light given off by the black body turns bluer.

 

So cool temps give warm coloured light, warm temps give cool coloured light.

 

Fewh.

Thanks, now I "get" it! Gees I guess I was stoned in my color theory classes... Ohhh, the colors, man, wow.

Hey, I haven't even mentioned the multiple firing stroboscope mode...!!

Jack

Hey Jack, don't sweat I did my two-year full-time college course at age 15-17, when all my freinds were finishing high school - so I was distracted by a college full of older women - not a lot sunk in as you can imagine. I think I was voted most likely not to succeed. But here I am 25 (ouch) years later, one of only 3 from my class of 30 still making a living by taking pictures.

Oh to have been learning photo theory now - when you can just go image>adjustments>curves

rather than have to expose and process a series of film step-wedges, read them on a densitomiter and plot the results on graph paper just to see a curve.

However judging them against a top of the line huge strobe like a DS200 isn't really a fair comparison. That's a $1100-1200 strobe against about a $550 housing and strobe combination. A fairer comparison would be with 2 DS51's and I think it would be a lot closer.

Yes, a DS51 versus the SB-800 would be a more equitable comparison, but I was only giving a rough analogy with the equipment I have on hand. My only other option for a comparison was to use my SunStrobe 400.

Oh to have been learning photo theory now - when you can just go image>adjustments>curves

rather than have to expose and process a series of film step-wedges, read them on a densitomiter and plot the results on graph paper just to see a curve.

Yes, densitometry wasn't my favourite course either, to put it mildly.