Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

I'm testing the Alien Bees Ring light on my Nikon D300.
I can get it to work with synch cable no problem.
I want to move it off camera.

I can trigger it as slave off the onboard commander flash when in manual. When I move to -- mode, the ABR800 fires but does not synch with the shutter. It's as if it's not firing at all on the image, but I see it firing.

When on camera flash is in M(1/128), the ABR800 fires and synchs fine. Camera flash synch speed is set to 1/320FP, and flash shutter speed set to 1/60. Cool, it works as a slave fine.

When I want to trigger the SB600, off camera, at the same time as the ABR800. With the SB600 in M(1/1), commander flash to M(1/128), the SB600 fires(lighting image) but the ABR800 again fires but is out of synch with shutter, with no light lighting the image.
No changes made to flash synch speed or flash shutter speed in camera.

If I set the SB600 to TTL, the SB600 fires(ABR800 still firing late or early). Set to AA(never used this mode ever), the SB600 does not fire at all.

Anyone have any experience with this combination or problem? Any solutions?

The Nikon CLS system sends preflash communication signals to the SB600, and the AB slave will fire off these instead of the actual command flash. You won't have much success mixing CLS with slave triggering in general.

Spring for a CST and a CSRB, hotshoe adapter to trigger your SB600, use it in manual mode, and then it can slave trigger your AB. If you get another CSRB for the AB, then you don't have to worry about whether the slave will fire under certain conditions (outdoors, big venues, poor line of sight, etc).

You can also trigger the CST via the PC terminal, and the 600 via the pop up. When the sync cord for the CSRB is inserted, the slave eye locks out and will not trigger in response to the CLS.

Thank you for the replies and solutions.