Gel my Flash

Usually I don't shoot with flash in the temple.

This is shot bounced flash to the ceiling.  The ambient is always too yellow and red.  There is no way I can shut out the ambient.

I gelled my SB-800 with a 1/2 CTO.  Manually set the white balance to 2900 or there about.

I am sure the front and the back or the center of the hall has different WB as the left has sunlight streaming from the windows, while the back of the room has more tungsten light from the ceiling.  Then the middle has some fluorescent tubes.  The red lanterns add some orange to the mix as well.  I think gelling the flash is a must if you use flash in this setting otherwise the WB is even more difficult to correct in post.

This is shot with my 16-35 f/4 with the Nikon D700.  IS0640, f/5.6, 1/100, WB2900, flash CTO gel.  Light room adjusted.  I am quite happy with the skin tone overall.

FM RADIO TRIGGER

I bought this years ago.  This is kind of a one packaging for a few.  The model I bought is the PT-04GY depicted on the upper right corner of the above picture.

I have used this with my cameras and flashes and they all work pretty well together, which is a good surprise.  The battery inside the transmitter still goes on and on after years of occasional usage.  I even connect it to my Hasselblad, or actually the Zeiss lens' PC plug to trigger the flash with no problem.  Just make sure the battery doors are properly closed and maintain good contact and the channel is the same across the board.

I don't know how reliable or unreliable are others.  For me this setup serves my very basic fundamental need for flash photos.

Unless I want to get into off camera flash using a higher than sync speed then I really don't see any compelling reason to upgrade.

Flash at a shutter speed higher than the X-sync speed is a topic that continues to confuse and confound plenty of users.  I've seen an Youtuber who totally got everything backward and yet appears totally authoritative.  When you have that level of confidence, you can do anything you want and achieve world dominance.

In the interest of the general public I shall refrain from talking about flash X-sync.

PROPAC CABLE NX problem

This is a cable that gave me problem.

When I got my PROPAC PB960, I opted for the Nikon version, that's the cable is for Nikon speedlight, in my case it's the Nikon SB-800.

But that cable was iffy, sometimes it worked but most of the time it didn't.  It took me quite some time to notice that.  Because, I didn't use the SB-800 often enough to notice.  The SB-800 requires 4AA batteries inside even when it's to be powered by the PB960 (the 4AA is then used for the display and other functions I guess), meaning when I am on TTL and has enough ambient and it doesn't draw 100% power I wouldn't notice the difference even it's coming off from the 4AA.  But finally I did notice the slow cycling time when the 4AA batteries depleted its power.

I don't have have other Nikon SB-800 flashes or other Nikon flashes that accept external power laying around for me to test if it's the flash or the cable or the pac unit.  But I figure in all likelihood it's the cable.  I hope it's not the PB960 itself of the SB-800.  The pac has no problem passing power to my Sunpak 120J with another cable at all and the SB-800 seems work fine.

Finally I got a hold of my friend who also owns a Nikon SB-800.  Same problem.  Sometimes it works but most of the time it doesn't.

I took a chance I ordered another NX cable on eBay.  I could have bought some quantum or paramount cable which are supposedly better made but more expensive even used, about $50 each.  The PROPAC PB980, at least the power cable is based on the quantum spec, that's my understanding.

Actually I wrote to Godox via email about the cable but of course nobody replied.  I also wrote to the original eBay seller I got it from with the pac, but to no avail.

The eBay cable came, it's practically new.  It is somewhat different from the one that came with the pac.  The new one has a shorter neck and has no sleeve and fits much snug than the original.  The original one is by no means loose when plugged into the SB-800.

no good cable with the sleeve removed just to show the neck

D810 with the NX cable attached that works.

This NX cable doesn't come with a sleeve, the 3 insertion prong is the same length though.  This one works.

SB-800, the left most hole has no protruding pin there, it's not broken it's just like that.

No good NX cable with the sleeve at the neck

the cable has 3 prongs like so.  The cable that works is very tight.  So maybe it's better made more on spec.

With the new cable, the SB-800 actually draws power from the pac as the cycling time is much faster even when the 4AA is low in juice.  The ready light on the Pac actually turns itself off as it recharges itself between flashes--I was doing a full power 1/1 manual flash on the SB-800 to make sure maximum power is used.

I hope the cable stays good.

I saw on YouTube there were similar issues with the cable, and some people suggest to turn on the pac then the flash unit in that order.  I did but still iffy.  So my experience is the cable is faulty perhaps not up to spec.  The other cable that works has some minor changes as it fits much tighter.  The absence of a sleeve probably has nothing to do with it, it could be even because it's a used cable but unlikely as the neck is much shorter to accommodate a sleeve like the original cable that I have had.

Nikon SB-800

My first outing using the newly acquired SB-800.  It was 100% AA battery powered so it had a hard time keeping up with the action.  You use what you have, that's about it.  (I bought a Godox PB-960 just so I can shoot my finger off without the wait or the change of AA batteries)  This wasn't done with the high speed sync I bought the flash for.  I think I was shooting more like 1/30 and panned with the action.

This one was done with high speed sync probably 1/1000s.

When you have a flash you end up shooting everything with flash.

EDIT 8/21/2017:
subsequently, I shot the SB-800 with power pack PB-960 hoping that there's virtually no wait to recycle.  Alas, there is.  Between shots the flash ready light was blinking so the flash was capable to go off but whether the exposure was "correct" was entirely a different story.  I tried to use Manual and turned it down to 1/2 and 1/4 but still the recycle is more than instantaneous.  If memories and anecdotes serve me well then I really think the 120J cycle faster whenever it's not at 1/1 power on power pack.  I love my 120J except when it comes to packing and transporting from A to B.  The freaking bare tube and the reflector are just too cumbersome.  Otherwise I think the light is pretty nice, sure it's all subjective, but I think what you believe is important.

EDIT 7/30/2018
the so called NX cable that came with the PB-960 was faulty for sure.  No power was drawn from the pac and hence the recycle time was slow as it was drawn from the 4AA cells.  I just bought another cable and now the setup works as it should and the cycle time is much faster even when I tested it out on manual 1/1 full power.  The NX cable I guess has poor quality control and it just fell below spec as the original was very iffy and most of the time it simply didn't work.  I hope this newer one works and works consistently and for a long time.