Mixing Nikon CLS + traditional radio trigger
Requirement/issue
At a recent event I tried to use an on-camera speedlight (SB-800) as a master and a off-camera speedlight (again SB-800) in a CLS setup where I would hopefully use the off-camera flash as a silhouette light.
(CLS = Nikon Creative Lighting System – where you can remotely fire flash using TTL – either with the on-bard flash (on some cameras) or another speedlight set to master. As well as using TTL you can also add compensation values to each group of remotes from the master.)
Although I’d tested them before getting into position (so channels and groups were fine) – the remote flash just didn’t fire. It was relatively in line of sight so that shouldn’t have been the issue, however with the speedlight facing forward the detector would be at the side of the speedlight and it was behind a shoot-through umbrella. I now think that possibly the combination of these meant that the signal from the master speedlight wasn’t getting through to the remote. It was also in a party environment so there were other lights which may have caused issues.
Turning the shoot-through umbrella to a bounce one may have worked (it’s a convertible umbrella), but there wouldn’t have been time for that.
Taking the umbrella off may have also helped, I should have tried this but alas didn’t.
In the past I’ve used a remote flash like this but using a radio trigger rather than Nikon CLS system.
I didn’t go for this setup on this occasion as I needed a on-camera speedlight as it was too dark without it.
So alas I made do without the remote speedlight.
After the event I investigated the option of using an on-camera speedlight but also a radio-triggered remote and my results are below.
Only one Hotshoe
The initial issue is that cameras only have one hotshoe. The on-camera Speedlight obviously needs to go in this. However most radio-triggers are also designed to go in this. They both can’t.
Other connectors
Thankfully there are a set of other connectors available.
PC socket: The PC socket is the standard/traditional method of firing flash via a cable.
My D800 has one:
And so does my SB-800’s:
Usually you’d use the PC sync on the speedlight to fire the speedlight itself i.e. incoming signal. However it appears that this socket is by-directional.
Sync Connector: It transpires that in addition to having the Skyport trigger via the hot-shoe there is also an additional SYNC connector:
Cable
The Sync connector on the Speedlight is smaller than the usual jack – it’s a 2.5mm jack socket rather than 3.5.
So the cable needs to be a 2.5mm jack to PC sync connector.
Thankfully one of these is supplied with skyport transmitters. I hadn’t taken it out of the wrapper let alone out of the box so I wasn’t really aware of it until investigating this issue.
Connection + Test
I wasn’t sure if it would work correctly and wasn’t sure which PC sync to use – the camera or the speedlight. My thoughts were that if the on-camera speedlight was in TTL that there may be a flash sync speed issue, particularly with the TTL pre-flashes. So I tried both.
Standard settings – both worked.
Pushing shutter speed up to 1/250th – both worked!
(My skyport are the “SPEED” variety so are faster than the older non-speed variety)
To reiterate, the setup is:
Remote Speedlight: Set to manual power, skyport receiver plugged in to the PC sync port.
On-camera Speedlight: Set to TTL, mounted on camera hotshoe.
Skyport Trigger: Connected by above cable, to PC sync port of either camera or on-camera speedlight.
So in future I may try this in such scenarios. It’s handy to know that it’s possible to mix TTL/CLS and manual radio triggering.
Worth noting of course – since operated by a standard “GO” signal radio trigger- you can’t control the power from the camera. Pocket wizard have made TTL capable radio triggers (FlexTT5/MiniTT1 for firing and AC3 controller for varying power) but they’re considerably more expensive that simpler radio triggers that just send a “go” command.
Mounting Trigger
Found an additional issue worth noting:
Not wanting the skyport trigger dangling by a cable which can come out I considered mounting the trigger to the speedlight via something like velcro or elastic. In testing this I found that if you place the trigger flat against the speedlight – trigger: the flat side with buttons, speedlight: on top of the flash head – that the signal would not get to the receiver. I imagine this is due to interference from the pulse of the speedlight firing. Instead I think I’ll attach the trigger to the side of the speedlight with elastic.
Burning Man 2013
With the sudden excitement of 2014 Burning Man tickets becoming available – I’ve remembered that I’ve STILL not done a public Burning Man Gallery. I went last year (2013) and had a press pass so I could publicly share my photography 🙂
I made business cards so that I could give them to all I photograph so I could give HighRes photos away as a form of gifting. As such these and many more have been up in a private gallery, but I thought it about time I made some public!
I took my D800, a couple of lenses and a speedlight. I was intending to do a mini studio at dusk – however our camp (Cabana Club) had it’s camp meals around that time and so I missed the opportunity other than a few in the camp! I’m not going again this year – but hopefully soon – and then I think I may make a special effort e.g. ask someone to keep food aside for me.
Dust wise – I bought a cheap waterproof housing – kind of a bag – but realised that to put the camera in I would need to take the lens off! SO not the best in a dust storm. So I just took the camera out as it was and put it in a bag if there was a particularly bad dust storm. D800 is weather sealed anyway. Also bought a can of compressed air before getting to the Playa. Anyway – this isn’t supposed to be a blog post about photography on the Playa – but instead one to share photos – so here are my favourites.
Click to view full picture
D800 + Nikon Transfer / View NX warning
This is an important blog post which I’ve meant to write for a while – a story of woe and near disaster. I hope others will see it and avoid such a situation. Please feel free to pass on or link on forums etc.
In brief – it’s about RAW files being downloaded via an old copy of Nikon Transfer (part of Nikon View NX) Corrupting RAW files from the D800!
To explain the setup/scenario which caused this for me:
Setup
On large shoots away from home (Weddings, Festivals, Collaborative shoots) I tend to shoot a lot of pictures. During most of these I shoot RAW files and as such even with a large 32Gb card it can fill up. Although I have smaller other cards sometimes these aren’t enough and so I copy files from the card (using a card reader) onto my netbook. Instead of just copying them – I’ve been using Nikon Transfer which is part of View NX. Hadn’t been doing this for any special reasons although there are advantages e.g. it can embed additional Metadata. Without realising it – I was running an old version of Transfer/View NX – not sure now but I think it was version 1.85 while the recent version was approx 2.5.
Procedure
On downloading the images to the netbook local hard drive (using the Transfer application) the previews were appearing in ViewNX just fine, and I previewed one or two and they looked Ok. So after downloading the whole card I formatted it and used it again (after using some other cards).
Discovering the Issue
On returning home I copied the files over from the netbook to my desktop using the home network just using standard file copy.
Opened up Bridge to view them – no go! Bridge couldn’t see them! It said they were not in a correct format.
Went back to the netbook and viewed them in ViewNX (no bridge) and they seemed fine.
Tried to copy again – no change.
Then opened up ViewNX on the desktop – and I could see them there BUT on opening them fully – ViewNX reported them as only being 1632 x 1080! From a D800 they should be 7360 x 4912.
Mad panic!
Investigation
I couldn’t understand why ViewNX could see the images (but report them as being small) while Bridge and other applications couldn’t see anything. I did some online searching and found other people who had run into the same issue – it pointed at the fact that an old version of Transfer had copied over the RAW happy as Lary but significantly corrupted them in the process! Some people said that the files were a total loss (NOT an option for me as this was a paid one-off event!) while others did point at various possible solutions.
Attempted solutions
(Jump to Final Solution below if not interested)
Metadata swap : Partially because of comments I’d seen online and otherwise a belief that Transfer only changed the metadata of files – I attempted a fix where I downloaded a command line program which could copy Metadata from a healthy RAW file, dump it to a local file, and then paste this into one of the corrupt files. No Go 😦
In connection to this I tried checking to see what kind of damage the transfer application did – I had RAW files on cards so copied one just using file copy, and again using the erroneous Transfer application – then compared the files using a file comparison application I use sometimes with coding. Alas they were drastically different – it wasn’t just the header of the file which had changed! I find it quite shocking that Transfer would do this.
Flash card recovery : Even though I knew there was no chance of getting ALL corrupt files back since I had formatted the card and started to re-use it again – there was a chance that I could recover some of the corrupt RAW files. So I installed a current copy of the RescuePro application that comes with Sandisk Extreme cards and gave it a go. And thankfully – it managed to recover quite a lot!
The Card holds about a thousand RAW files.
I had formatted and re-used the card to about half way – and so I was able to recover about half the RAW files from the formatted but un-used card – woohoo!
I discovered two things while trying to install the Rescue Pro software:
- The code that comes with the card is not in fact the license key – it’s just a code that you have to enter on a website. They then send you the true license key shortly after. Yes I wasted quite some time trying to enter this as the license key!
- Once validated the licence key is only valid for 12 months. Therefore a previous key I had no longer worked. As such – don’t install this application as soon as you get a card – keep the Serial ID safe and only use to get a license key once you really need to us it.
Copy small (1632 x 1080) images : This wasn’t really an option which I wanted to consider. although technically “HD” they wouldn’t be remotely close to the full res. However I was having dread thoughs of having to take a screen-grab of ViewNX preview to use in Photoshop!
Contact Nikon : I contacted Nikon Support with the hope that they had some special program or technique where they could recover all the original RAW data from the corrupt file – a sort of reverse engineering the corruption, but alas it was not so. Their reply confirmed partially what I had already found online:
“I am really sorry to learn about your problem with D800 files and old View NX.
Older Nikon software released before the D800 does not have correct algorithms to recognise the new RAWfile format. Upon transferring it saves some information in an incorrect place, effectively damaging integrity of the file. The issue does not exist with the version distributed together with the camera or newer.
There is a way to recover full-resolution JPEG previews from the damaged files – they are quite highly compressed so you can see some artifacts (especially in detail-less midtones and shadows), but the quality should be sufficient for most purposes. Please note this is not a official Nikon procedure, however it worked successfully for few other customers that had the same problem. Also, as the IJFR application is not our product, we cannot take any responsibility should it cause any problems.
1. Please download and install the freeware IJFR utility: http://rawworkflow.squarespace.com/instant-jpeg-from-raw-utility/
2. Create a copy of all your affected images in a single folder (just in case)
3. Select all files, right-click and choose “Instant JPEG from RAW”
4. Select “Native Size only”, “Add suffix” and “JPEGs in folder(s) next to Raws” and click Extract
5. A separate folder will be created, containing the extracted previews.
Also, please uninstall Nikon Transfer (if it appears as a separate application) and your copy of View NX2. Then install the latest version from the link below:”
The link they gave was to Nikon View NX 2.5, but I have an updated one below. Also note above app link is currently dead but I list more below.
Final Solution
For the images.
So the solution was two-fold
- For the files that were still on the formatted memory card but not written over – RescuePro recoverd the original RAW files.
- For those I could not recover: So it transpires that in addition to a small thumbnail image (as is saved in some jpeg files) the RAW files contained a full resolution preview! Alas this was heavily compressed but thanks to the D800 36Mpx this was minimised for web images. While jpeg files for the D800 usually come out at 5-20Mb these files were 1.5-3Mb. Of course I would loose the editing advantage of RAW files – but a full res jpeg is better than nothing!
I found a number of applications which could do this extraction:
http://rawworkflow.squarespace.com/instant-jpeg-from-raw-utility/ (As suggested by Nikon – Site currently down)
http://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm
For the Future:
Even future-proofing isn’t straight forward! It seems that if you have an old version (pre 2) of ViewNX and Transfer installed then just updating View NX will not fix the issue! It seems that it doesn’t always replace the old Nikon Transfer – just installs the new one alongside. So if you have shortcuts just pointing to Transfer (as I did) then you could still run into this issue! So my suggestion is to totally un-install Nikon View related software (+ Transfer) and then do an install of the newest version from scratch.
Currently that is : Nikon View NX 2.6.0
And of course – I will now.
But I am also considering not using Transfer – why would it need to change the RAW file at all other than maybe adding data to the metadata. really not too sure about that.
So that’s it – hopefully this article goes through the internet ether and is noticed by people with modern Nikon Cameras who may still be running the older versions of Nikon Transfer. Or failing that – those with corrupt RAW files who haven’t found the solution.
D800 at long last ?
Woohoo!
Well maybe……
Rumours are currently rife that the camera I’ve been waiting YEARS for may finally be with us – the update to the D700 i.e. D800.
Why do I want a new camera and why have I been waiting for so long ?
For those that aren’t camera boffins – generally the race for more and more Megapixels in SLRs slowed down considerably over the last couple of years – and instead camera/sensor manufacturers have been consentrating more on low-ligh or High-ISO performance i.e. making the images less grainy/noisy when you crank the ISO up. Recent cameras such as Nikon D3s have had phenomenal High-Iso performance – with next to no noise at ISO 1600+
(If you don’t know – the dots/bits in film was called grain as it was due to the film emulsion, but in digital cameras it’s generally called “noise” as it’s due to electronic interference or noise…. hmm not sure if I explained that V well 😉 )
Now I use a Nikon D200 – this camera was announced November 2005! That’s almost 6 years ago – aeons in DSLR terms.
Why didn’t I upgrade ?
Well the options were –
D300 – more of an update than an upgrade. Didn#’t want to spend my money for just a smaller update.
D300s – and update of an update – as above really
D700 – Although much better camera it still only had 12Mpx and I did fancy more, especially for studio work. And then later on as Video comes into the frey – D700 just doesn’t have video. Not that Video was top of my list – I’m not dying to take moving images – but I just didn’t want to loose out.
D3/D3s/D3x – Too big (+pricey). I want a small body D-SLR.
So in effect I’ve been waiting for a D700, with more Mpx, and Video.
So it seems it’s finally here:
http://nikonrumors.com/2011/10/09/nikon-d800-specs-recap.aspx
Woo hoo!
But at 36Mpx (!!) it sounds like it’s more likely to be a baby updated D3x i.e. studio camera rather than a baby updated D3s – which is probably what would have suited me better.
My preference would be for a High-teens / low 20’s, small body camera with great High_ISO performance.
BUT I’ve been waiting so long for this – I’m damn right going to get it. So come November when allegedly it’s going to become available – I may be very very poor 😉
Here’s crossing everything hoping that the Nikon announcements on/around the 24th make me happy.
