Nikon CLS – brilliant stuff
Nikon’s CLS [Creative Lighting System] gives the freedom to shoot with remote speedlights, and the ability to control the master [on-camera] and remote [off-camera] flash units from a simple and quick menu system. High speed-sync high-speed flash-fill shooting in bright daylight is so easy with this system and the camera/flash units will sync perfectly all the way to 1/8000 of a second shutter speed if needed. Gone are the days of being restricted to the 1/200 or max 1/250 sec sync speeds. Lovely. Especially for me as I like to shoot with the lens wide open.
I was able to switch to TTL [with negative or positive compensation] or to fully manual output or a combination of having the on-camera master unit fire in manual mode and the remote[s] in TTL mode. Wow!
The meter exposure reading varied from 1/200 to 1/8000 second and the Nikon CLS allowed me to nail the exposure each time with ease. I was switching between Manual Exposure and Aperture Priority modes from the camera and the CLS kept up with it. I’ve heard of discussions and reports on the net about the failure of Nikon CLS in bright daylight…. I did not have one misfire nor one instance where the commander/master and remotes did not do what I set on the menu. BRILLIANT STUFF!
Here is one sample from yesterday’s shoot
Equipment: Nikon D3 camera, Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 AFS Nano lens, 3 SB800 speedlights.
