Hi, I am new to flash and having read the Nikon manuals, tortuous, I ultimately had a pleasing studio session yesterday that has left me with a question and some advice/views would be much appreciated.
My environment is D7000 firmware up-to-date, SB700, 60cm softbox, white reflector. SB700 is off camera on stand and I had to rapidly buy one of those plastic cover things when I discovered the D7000 firmware does not work when you set the built-in flash as Master and tell it not to flash; and if that does not affect you it affected me (there seem to be different opinions on this one). My final settings for the session, after a fair amount of experimentation were
D7000
· Built=in flash set to master + “—“
· Group A set to ttl plus some flash compensation
· Channel set to 1
· Model lighting off
· Spot metering so that the flash was unbalanced
· Shooting mode – aperture priority
· Flash mode – fill flash
· White balance set to “flash” (not quite right but after further reading I suspect I should have used the SB700 tungsten filter and let the D7000 adjust automatically)
SB700
· Set to Remote (after further reading I think I could leave the mode at “On”)
· Zoom 35mm
· 0 flash compensation
· Lighting pattern narrowest
· SB700 and soft box located behind the camera and raised
Not sure the white balance setting was the best selection; easily fixed in LR but I need to experiment a bit to get right.
Not sure why but I think I decided to do the flash compensation in the D7000 because the SB 700 was raised and against a wall and difficult to get to; not aware of any advantages one way or the other.
OK so on to my question. When I first started on this I read the D7000 user manual flash sections and the SB700 user manual, both preceded by the Nikon Magic Lantern book on AF Speedlight Flash System, which was a bit out of date for me only going as far as the D70 and the SB800. Now whilst I think I got a fair handle on most of the concepts I was at a loss as to what actually to do with my equipment settings. I did form the opinion that I wanted to set my SB700 as the master but is seems that when off camera I cannot do this, so my first question is am I missing out on anything by having the SB700 set as remote rather than Master – I could use a decent length non Nikon cable to hot shoe attach it. Also I do expect to advance to more than one speedlight and maybe there is more to consider with my question when I have multiple speedlights. Or is it just easier/better to let the D7000 control the whole operation?
So if anyone can help that would be appreciated. Oh and if there is anything wrong with the settings I have noted above, feel free to set me right on those too.
Cheers, Pete