Do I need to buy pocket wizards?

[Lazarus52980]

I have been doing some reading online, but I can't seem to find a straight answer to this. I own a Nikon D5200 and an SB-910 speed light. If I want to do off camera flash with those, do I need to buy two pocket wizards, or can I use the commander system to use the speed light off camera without having to spend anymore money?

 

[Syborg1211]

The 5200 doesn't have commander mode, so you can't control the SB-910 through iTTL.

However, you can put the SB-910 into optical slave mode so that it fires whenever it sees a flash go off. So what you can do with the d5200 is put it on the lowest flash power setting so that the on-camera flash contributes very little to the exposure, but the SB-910 would still see the flash and then go off. You would need to manually control the power of the SB-910 in this case though.

Just fyi, TTL means through-the-lens metering. So basically the camera controls the exposure of the flash to tell it how hard to light a subject. Using optical slave mode instead of TTL to the SB-910 means the camera can't communicate with the SB-910, only trigger it, and thus it cannot do TTL metering.

You can buy pocketwizards that support TTL for Nikon, but most people end up just using them for the wireless non-TTL communication since that trigger flash from your D5200 ends up always adding a little to the exposure and doesn't always work in larger rooms, outdoors, or weird angles.

Edit: I'm not 100% sure the D5200 can do TTL metering even with pocketwizards you might want to look into that.

 

[Lazarus52980]

The 5200 doesn't have commander mode, so you can't control the SB-910 through iTTL.

However, you can put the SB-910 into optical slave mode so that it fires whenever it sees a flash go off. So what you can do with the d5200 is put it on the lowest flash power setting so that the on-camera flash contributes very little to the exposure, but the SB-910 would still see the flash and then go off. You would need to manually control the power of the SB-910 in this case though.

Just fyi, TTL means through-the-lens metering. So basically the camera controls the exposure of the flash to tell it how hard to light a subject. Using optical slave mode instead of TTL to the SB-910 means the camera can't communicate with the SB-910, only trigger it, and thus it cannot do TTL metering.

You can buy pocketwizards that support TTL for Nikon, but most people end up just using them for the wireless non-TTL communication since that trigger flash from your D5200 ends up always adding a little to the exposure and doesn't always work in larger rooms, outdoors, or weird angles.

Edit: I'm not 100% sure the D5200 can do TTL metering even with pocketwizards you might want to look into that.

Thank you for the info.

Do you happen to know what feature I should look for on a camera so I am sure it can do wireless I-TTL?

 

[Syborg1211]

I think the pocketwizards that support TTL (flextt5) will just make it look to your camera like the SB-910 is attached to the camera. TTL should be supported through this.

 

[Lazarus52980]

I think the pocketwizards that support TTL (flextt5) will just make it look to your camera like the SB-910 is attached to the camera. TTL should be supported through this.

Ahh, ok. So I am looking at about $450 for a pair of those. Good to know. Thank you again.

 

[tdawg]

You can get an SU-800 to basically add commander functionality to your existing camera. Cheaper than a pair of pocket wizards and provides full CLS functionality.

 

[estarkey7]

Don't spend that money on that system until you look into an aftermarket system by Youngnuo called the yn-622N. A fifth the price and the same functionality. I had a system for my Canon and it was awesome! Look for then on Amazon or eBay.

 

[blastingcap]

Thank you for the info.

Do you happen to know what feature I should look for on a camera so I am sure it can do wireless I-TTL?

The D7xxx series has flashes that can act as wireless commanders. Why not the D5xxx/Dxxx series, you ask? It's artificial crippling, like NVidia and AMD crippling DP performance on gaming card GPUs, in order to protect their higher-margin professional Quadro/Tesla cards that use the exact same GPUs.