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35 of 36 found the following review helpful:
 The best PORTRAIT trigger out there May 02, 2009
By Bearie Luv Amazon
"bearieamazon"
First of all if you want a general purpose, reliable, long distance remote trigger, you really should look into Radio Popper, Cactus, PovertyWizard, and such. Don't get me wrong, there's a place and time to use RP, Cactus, PW, and the SU-800. They all have their niches. For example when I go shoot outdoors where I place the flash units far away from the camera, I'll use the PW-- you get superior range over the SU-800, and good reliability. However it is very expensive, and the older PW units don't have TTL so if you don't set your power setting correctly the first time you end up having to walk to/from different flash units to change their power setting. I've not used Radio Popper myself but I've heard good things about it since it preserves TTL functionality. As for Cactus, it's very cheap, but also has limited range and is not as reliable as the other alternatives. In all cases, these are 3rd party vendor solutions with yet one more piece of equipment (battery, configuration, etc) to worry about, and one more point of failure in your day-to-day shoot.
On the other hand... if you're shooting indoors, or doing on-site portrait work, this is THE remote unit to use. In the literature, the range of this commander unit is 66 feet. However, in practice, I've seen it vary between 30-50 feet, and almost always line of sight. If I'm indoors, I prefer this unit because it is very light and you will not feel any extra weight on your camera. So despite the lack of range, I still love the SU800. It offers a fully integrated Nikon CLS solution, and is simply easy to use when you do portrait work. i-TTL is built in with 3 channels so you can adjust power (or not have to think about power at all when you do portrait work). Sure, the built in commander flash in D80/90/200/300/D700 is nice, but they only have 2 channels, and frequently the pre-flash from those cameras makes people blink excessively. On the SU-800 there is no preflash so you can take pictures of people and pets without bothering them with the preflash, and you end up having more usable shots. In addition, this is a must have accessory if you're doing very low light, no flash, walk-around shooting using SU-800's discrete red light focus beam. Yes you can achieve the same on the SB-800/900 by turning off flash and only enabling the red AF-assist, but they weigh a lot more, and make the camera very bulky. Lastly, this is a nice item to have with the R1C1 kit, though not absolutely necessary since you can use the on-camera flash, and macros aren't usually affected by the on-camera flash.
The SB-800 and SB-900 have commander units too, and when you point them towards other flashes in the commander mode, the range is about 50% greater than that of SU-800: I've gotten about 50 feet of range with the SU-800, and about 75-80 feet of range with the SB-800 and SB-900. Clear line of sight (from the commander to the optical receiver) is the key. The down-side to using SB-800/900 as commanders is that they weigh a lot more, and they emit pre-flash making people blink more than necessary.
I'm giving it 4 stars because it does extremely well for what it was designed and built for-- indoor portrait commander device. If Nikon came out with a longer range radio unit, I'd give it 5 stars, but that was not what the SU-800 was originally designed for. For outdoor strobists, I still recommend radio signal commander/receiver alternatives, at a price of course.
15 of 15 found the following review helpful:
I really like it Sep 27, 2009
By Richard A. Selby
The SU-800 is lightweight and very easy to maneuver flash settings from. The range in outdoor sun light can be limiting due to the I/R signal. The cost compared to Radios Poppers, Pocket Wizards and other triggering devices is justifiable for what it does, you get TTL flash capability for about $250.00 and you don't need a receiver for every flash like the other devices. You can control a host of units in 3 separate groups with 4 different channels The thing I really like about the SU800 is the fact it doesn't emit a flash from the camera that contributes light to the exposure/subject. No cables are involved and it's rather seamless on the camera hot shoe. The screen is easy to see and as I said it's very easy to maneuver flash settings from while on your camera. All in all it's a great device, is it perfect? No not really, it would be nice if it operated off of a Radio Frequency signal rather than a Infra-Red signal and allowed higher sync speed up to 1/8000 like the Radio Poppers do.
I've had very few misfires because I work through the obstacles and know the limitations of this unit, is it worth the money? Well..... I think it is:-)
The pluses:
It's true TTL
it's light weight
easy to adjust settings while on camera
doesn't contribute to the exposure of your subject
you don't need cables
doesn't need a receiver like Pocket Wizards and other triggers
The minuses are:
you will need direct line of sight to your off camera flash units, SB600, SB800 or SB900.
Range is some what limited (you have to learn how to work around obstacles)
It's doesn't always fire.
I/R signal vs RF
18 of 21 found the following review helpful:
Light is *not* purely IR Feb 01, 2007
By Daniel Marley
The SU-800 works great, performs as advertised, except that the light is not purely ir, as I had been led to believe. There is a small amount of red light when you take the shot, and my ever-blinking wife reacts even to that. i-TTL preflash never works, of course, but this happens even when on manual. My solution has been to turn the AF-illuminator mode on, which uses a brighter red light to assist focus. Her eyes adjust to the red light, so then the trigger light doesn't cause a blink. The catch there is that once the camera achieves focus the light turns off, so I can't focus-recompose, because in the time it takes to reframe her eyes have adjusted back to no light, and she blinks again. Sigh. Oh, and this still has to be done in manual. I'm thinking a different body with FV lock (my D40 lacks this) might be able to work around this, but I'm not sure. Pocket Wizards would definitely work, but having to walk over to the flashes and set levels manually would be much less convenient.
It is a good product otherwise, but be aware that if you are hoping for a completely invisible trigger, you will be disappointed.
7 of 7 found the following review helpful:
 Light My Fire Nov 22, 2007
By Raymond Kennedy
The Nikon SU-800 commander is such a great way for me to create light
from wherever I want. I do not like flash especially from the camera.
This is a very portable way of doing amazing photo's anywhere, even at
night in the dark and form any angle with a few small flashes on stands
or just hand held.
Opens up a new world of photo opportunities. Highly recommended.
ray kennedy
9 of 10 found the following review helpful:
 Batteries Apr 14, 2010
By A. Goetz
I just got the SU-800. It seems to work exactly as expected, except not on the page for the product nor in any of the reviews I read did someone feel like mentioning that this thing doesn't use AA batteries. I had to go out and buy some CR123 batteries. Apparently, the flashes on the macro system use these too and that's why, but I only plan to use them with my SB 800 an SB 600 units, which all use AA's. Now, not only do I have a mix in battery types, but I have to either go get a new charger or keep buying new batteries. That's a bit of a pain.
See all 24 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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