Nikon D7000 manual Working with Nikon Flash Units

418 David Busch’s Nikon D7000 Guide to Digital SLR Photography

However, the D7000 and certain Nikon flashes provide a partial solution, called high- speed sync or FP sync (focal plane sync). Those flash units can fire a series of flashes con- secutively in rapid succession, producing the illusion of a longer continuous flash, although at reduced intensity. These multiple flashes have a duration long enough to allow exposing the area of the sensor revealed by the traveling slit as it makes its full pass. However, the reduced intensity means that your flash’s range is greatly reduced.

This technique is most useful outdoors when you need fill-in flash, but find that 1/250th second is way too slow for the f/stop you want to use. For example, at ISO 200, an outdoors exposure is likely to be 1/250th second at, say, f/14, which is perfectly fine for an ambient/balanced fill-flash exposure if you don’t mind the extreme depth-of-field offered by the small f/stop. But, what if you’d rather shoot at 1/1,600th second at f/5.6? High-speed sync will let you do that, and you probably won’t mind the reduced flash power, because you’re looking for fill flash, anyway. This sync mode offers more flexi- bility than, say, dropping down to ISO 100.

High-speed sync is also useful when you want to use a larger f/stop to limit the amount of depth-of-field. Select a shutter speed higher than 1/250th second, and the faster-sync speed automatically reduces the effective light of the flash, without other intervention from you.

To use Auto FP sync with units like the Nikon SB-900, SB-700, SB-800 (now discon- tinued), SB-600, and SB-R200 units, there is no setting to make on the flash itself. You need to use CSM #e1 to specify either 1/320 s (Auto FP) or 1/250 s (Auto FP). When either of those settings is activated, when using P or A exposure modes, the shutter speed will be set to 1/320th or 1/250th second (respectively) when a compatible external flash is attached. Higher shutter speeds than 1/320th or 1/250th second can then be used with full synchronization, at reduced flash output.

Working with Nikon Flash Units

If you want to work with dedicated Nikon flash units, at this time you have six choices, the D7000’s built-in flash, the Nikon SB-900, SB-700, SB-800, SB-600, SB-400 on- camera flash units, and the SB-R200 wireless remote flash. (The discontinued SB-800 can still be found on the used market, while the SB-600 is slated for replacement soon.) These share certain features, which I’ll discuss while pointing out differences among them. Nikon may introduce additional flash units during the life of this book, but the current batch and the Nikon Creative Lighting System ushered in with them were sig- nificant steps forward, so I don’t expect any major changes in the near future. First, a quick introduction to the separate flash units currently available: