Nikon 978-0-470-04527-5 W

When Nikon introduced the Creative Lighting System, it was mostly overlooked.

The focus was on the rapidly changing advancement of digital SLR cameras. This

disregard was a shame because the Nikon Creative Lighting System was the most amazing

development to happen to photographic lighting in decades. The ability to inﬁnitely control

the output of multiple lights and to be able to do it wirelessly, without the need of an

expensive light meter was unheard of.

Even now, the praises of the Nikon CLS are largely unsung. Other companies have tried to

replicate the Nikon CLS with marginal success. Nikon simply offers more options and a

wider variety of accessories. With the SB-800, the SB-600, the SU-800, the R1, and the

R1C1, no other company comes close to offering such a multitude of tools for speciﬁc light-

ing needs.

The main feature of CLS is the ability to get the ﬂashes off of the camera and to be able to

control them wirelessly. When you’re stuck with the ﬂash mounted on the camera or even

to a ﬂash bracket, your ability to control the lighting is severely impeded — leaving you stuck

with full frontal lighting.

With the CLS, you can direct the light. Thus, you can create the same lighting patterns that

professionals achieve with expensive studio strobes, at a much lower cost. This is the key

to professional-looking images: controlling the lighting to get the effect you want.

Nikon started toying with wireless Speedlight control in 1994 with the introduction of the

SB-26 Speedlight. This ﬂash incorporated a built-in optical sensor that enabled you to trig-

ger the ﬂash with the ﬁring of another ﬂash. While this was handy, you still had to meter

the scene and set the output level manually on the SB-26 itself.

With the release of the SB-28 in 1997, Nikon dropped the built-in optical sensor. You could

still do wireless ﬂash, but you needed to buy the SU-4 wireless sensor. Wireless ﬂash still

had to be set manually because the pre-ﬂashes used by the TTL metering system caused

the SU-4 to ﬁre the Speedlight prematurely.

In 1999 Nikon released the SB-28DX; this ﬂash was made to work with Nikon’s emerging

line of digital SLRs. The only change from the SB-28 was the metering system. The Nikon

ﬁlm-based TTL metering was replaced by DTTL. This metering system compensated for the

lower reﬂectivity of a digital sensor as opposed to ﬁlm’s highly reﬂective surface.

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