Austin, TX.
Just returned from teaching a great lighting class with the Mentor Series in Austin Texas. Cowboys, barbecues and retro were the themes. I literally walked into my hotel room, saw the retro refrigerator, and started setting up my speed lights (see my instagram account for the final shot…’tombolphoto’). Also had a great time teaching with Joey Terrill. As often happens with these classes, there were many different brands of flashes. We were shooting Nikon equipment, but in the past I have used the SU-4 mode to fire Nikon speedlights in a slave mode whenever another flash goes off. This way a Canon shooter could trigger Nikon flashes.
When I first saw there was no SU-4 mode on the new SB5000 I was distraught. But what I have learned in using this new speedlight is this slave mode is now called ‘remote direct’ mode on the SB5000. Simple toggle through the modes using the button on the right of the flash located next to the test fire button. Then set your flash to Manual mode in the Remote Direct mode and you are ready to go. Your SB5000 will fire whenever it sees another flash in the scene. This is very handy when you are mixing different flashes and strobe packs for an image.