I’ve not used a SB700 yet. I expect it will be a perfect partner for the SB900.

Cheers, Damien.

Switch off the beep and switch off the thermal cut out. Problem solved )

Cheers, Damien.

Thanks

Julie and I have retired (by design) from weddings after 10 years and over 350 top weddings. It was a fabulous career and now I pass on my wisdom to others so that they can reap the benefits of our experience at the upper end of the market. And they certainly do. When we started shooting weddings back in 1999 £400 – £600 for a wedding was ‘good money’. We bucked the trend early on and delivered a completely new product. One we charged top money for. Ten years on and there are still photographers peddling the kind of product we offered back then. Like laminate flooring, it’s had it’s day. It’s time for some fresh products and talent. Many photographers I know regularly get £5k from each wedding they shoot. Once parents albums, pre-wedding shoots and Cherish type shoots are taken into account. They are fabulous people foremost and creative photographers too.

My income over the years has always been multi-faceted with Stock Library, Portraits, Weddings and a bit of commercial work in the mix for good measure. It is certainly still possible for some photographers to make serious money in this industry and my new role is to show them how. It’s always good to have an exit strategy so that we know our working parameters rather than drift season to season with no route off the treadmill. I wrote my wedding book as part of my exit strategy and backed it up with 5 DVD productions. I’m still shooting portraits, I write for magazines, I am launching my first art book, I teach, I have a retail online store and a few other projects in the pipeline. It takes all of these activities to replace my income from shooting 30 weddings each year. The fees for those weddings aren’t dropping and the weddings are still as lavish. The great news for the UK wedding industry is I’m seeing some fabulous new talent coming in with great ideas, creative products, and fresh eyes. High end, high quality wedding photography is here to stay and like other luxury spends including Jimmy Choos & Mercedes, the public want it as much now as ever before.

Kindest regards,

Damien.

Indeed, I remember I used 2 heads. Sorry for the confusion. I remember the pack being a bit of a tower with it all connected together.

Cheers, Damien.

Indeed the Q flash like the Bron Mobil has no focusable lens on the flash head. This along with TTL and high speed sync are the Speedlight advantages. (Quantum does have TTL but I couldn’t get it to work properly (3 years ago) with Freewire. This Speedlight lens makes a massive difference when used outside.

Cheers,

Damien.

Here is the Quantum unit I had that works at 800Ws: http://qtm.com/?page=3191&qmode=c I know very many pro photographers shooting weddings and portraits who are doing fabulously well at the moment. Certain sectors of pro photography are struggling a bit but many retail photographers are doing fine.

Cheers, Damien.

Of my three SB-800s I have just one left and it only works on manual mode. (It always dumps full power in TTL mode). Both my SB-900s are fine even after 20 workshops with 4 delegates and me blasting them within inches of their lives.

Cheers, Damien.

The SB-900 is far superior to the SB-800. I’ve disabled the thermal cut out and the flash doesn’t seem to get any hotter than the SB-800 anyway. Zoom the SB-900 in and it is way more punchy than the Quantum direct. (I had the X4D). The Quantum maxed out with 800ws is more expensive than the Bron Mobil with 1200ws and not as well made in my opinion. The Bron is perfect for me and I do use the full 1200ws nearly all the time when out on location.

Cheers, Damien.

I cant realy see the point of the SB900, and it certainly doesnt look like an ugrade to the 800

You can pretty much hammer both the SB800 and the batteries will get warm, but never to the point they are overheating. If you are taking a shot every few seconds, the first thing you will worry about is the speed you get through a set of batteries. I run my sb800′s with the 5th battery in place, and TBH, apart from eating batteries, the units are faultlless

http://www.lovegroveconsulting.com/cherish.aspx

Now that you have been using the SB900 for some length of time, can you please comment on the much reported overheating issue that keeps appearing on various forums?

I’d like to invest in a second speedlight but the continued threads bemoaning the 900 unit are really bothering me. Some users are reporting unbelievable horror stories, even with the “thermal cut-off” turned off. Can you share your experiences so far please?

Thanks for your help.

Neal.

You can use off camera flash with the D60 in conjunction with the SU-800 commander or for close proximity work you can always use the SC29 lead.

The pop up flash system for remote triggering has a couple of slight disadvantages: 1. It causes blinks when the pre-flash goes off. 2. In some shots I have seen a feint amount of light coming from the built in flash even when it is set to non firing.

It is still a good value add on though and I will be using it from time to time on my Nikon D700.

Damien.