I’ve had a number of email queries about using wireless TTL flash with the D70. So even though the D70 manual (p.150-151) is quite thorough on this, I think that the abundance of information might be overwhelming to someone who wants to set it up the first time.
I’m offering this as a quickie guide to getting wireless i-TTL flash going on your D70, even though there is no information here that isn’t clearly explained in the manual.
You have two ways of firing your remote flash:
A. with the pop-up flash:
You need to set CF#19 to Commander Mode.
You do this by going in to the Pencil menu (CSM menu), but make sure that you have “Detailed CSM Menu” selected under the Spanner menu (Set Up menu).As part of a sub-menu to CF#19, you select which mode your slave flashgun (SB-800 or SB-600) will be used in – TTL, AA or Manual.
You need to set your slave flashgun to Channel 3, Group A.
Note that the built-in (pop-up) flash, (in theory at least), doesn’t contribute to the exposure of the image, and only acts as the commander strobe to control your remote SB-600 or SB-800.
If you want a more versatile set-up, or have to fire different strobes in different groups .. then you need to use an SB-800 as the master strobe on your camera instead of the pop-up flash.
.
B. with the SB-800 on camera:
You don’t need to set CF#19 for this. This custom function is only for when you use the pop-up flash as the commander flash.
Press the SEL button on the back of your SB-800 until you get the menu. Go into the wireless set-up and set your on-camera strobe to “Master”.
Then press the the On/Off button to go back to the wireless control display to control your various remote strobes.
Do the same for your remote strobes, and select them as “Remote”.
Press the On/Off button to go back to the wireless control display and select which channel and group you want this remote strobe to be triggered as.
.
From here on, you’re best off going through the manual or especially the nifty extra guide that Nikon supplies, called “A collection of example photos”.
photography books by Neil vN
newsletter / forum / workshops & seminars
Stay informed of new articles via the monthly newsletter.
Also join us on the Tangents forum for further discussions.
If you need more direct help or instruction on flash photography,
I do present workshops & seminars and also offer individual tutoring sessions.
If you find these articles interesting and of value, then you can help by
using these affiliate links to order equipment & other goodies. Thank you!
[...] Your decision here will rest on whether you need your built-in flash as the main flash or fill-fash (and then TTL would usually make the most sense), or whether you want to use the strobe as the Commander strobe to control a Slave flashgun (a remotely triggered SB-600 / SB-800). More here on setting up your D70 to use wireless flash. [...]
Pingback by planet neil - tangents » Nikon D70 custom settings — December 23, 2007 @ 4:41 am
“You need to set your slave flashgun to Channel 3, Group A.”
Is the line in the manual that will give people the most trouble, took me 10 minutes to get the Camera & Flash too work.
Comment by Tesseract — February 11, 2009 @ 9:26 pm
The SB 800 should be set at REMOTE, not Master, that´s how I got it to work on a D70s, and it rocks!!!!!!
Comment by maria — May 6, 2010 @ 10:51 pm