Reviewed By: B J Harris on 21/08/2007,
Customer Rating: 
The SB-800 was announced 22 July 2003 by Nikon. It is Nikon's best flashgun. Nikon SB-800 works with every Nikon camera made for the past several years. It's the only flashgun, along with the almost identical SB-600, that works properly with the Nikon D70, Nikon D50 DSLR and the new i-TTL exposure system.
The Nikon SB-800 flash includes colored filters to match tungsten and fluorescent light. These filters are very important for use indoors. Currently I Velcro gels to my Nikon SB-28DX to match the ambient light. Most people are not familiar with this trick I have learned this from a friend of mine who was pro-photographer. This is an important feature since you need to match the flash to the ambient light for fill. If you already know how to gel your flash it's no big problem, but for most people this will be a great help. For my current flashgun I go to a theatrical lighting supply store to buy filter material made by people. You then set the camera's white balance to match the ambient light and everything looks good, instead of having fill and ambient light with different colors.
The Nikon SB-800 adds a reverse flash guide number mode for flash where you set the aperture and the flash sets the level automatically based on subject distance.
The SB-800 has a rated GN of 125' at ISO 100. At full manual power it has a recycle time of 5 seconds or 4 seconds with 4x Ni-MH batteries and provides 130 shots with alkaline batteries or 160 shots with 4x Ni-MH batteries.
The SB-800 flashgun provided with an extra one AA battery holder which reduces the recyling time in almost half. if you'r thinking having a best and pro-flash, consider the Nikon SB-800, it is the best! |