Off-camera slave flash: do I need TTL?

[radhak]

I have the SB700 as my main flash, and want to get one (or two) smaller (cheaper) flash for fill/background for portraits. I see a bunch on Amazon that are this side of $50 and highly rated. What caught my eye was that the Neewer VK750 is TTL enabled, while the Neewer 560 is not.

For a difference of barely $20 I might just get the former, but still want to know: if I will be using these flashes only as slaves, does it even make sense for them to have TTL? I will have to manually adjust their settings, right?

And while I have yor attention, is there a way I can mount this flash onto a light stand like this (instead of the continuous lamp)?

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

To the best of my knowledge TTL doesn't work in plain ol slave mode, i.e. setting a flash to pop whenever it sees another flash.

With Nikon CLS and "Commander Mode" the master flash can send TTL info to the slave flash wirelessly, but you need to make sure you flash is CLS-compatible, and outside of Nikon's proprietary equipment, compatibility is hit-or-miss. Frankly, I don't find it works well in any case. I have a D7000 with "Flash Commander" built-in, plus SB-800 and SB-600 speedlights. Despite that, I just bought a set of Phottix Ares wireless transmitters because I was sick of Nikon's CLS failing to trigger the remote flashes so often.

My transmitters do not support TTL, and I admit it would be a nice feature, but it also isn't too hard to chimp a few test shots and dial in the right flash output manually. Once it's set, you're good to go. The TTL-enabled transmitters are pricey.

This assumes you're indoors and aren't contending with fluctuating ambient light levels, of course. I could see the value of wireless TTL flash increasing if you were outdoors. Outdoors is particularly where Nikon CLS has the most problems, too.

 

[radhak]

Thanks Cerpin. That makes a lot of sense. When I don't have to worry about other, varying light, manually adjusting slaves should not be too difficult.

 

[tdawg]

To the best of my knowledge TTL doesn't work in plain ol slave mode, i.e. setting a flash to pop whenever it sees another flash.

With Nikon CLS and "Commander Mode" the master flash can send TTL info to the slave flash wirelessly, but you need to make sure you flash is CLS-compatible, and outside of Nikon's proprietary equipment, compatibility is hit-or-miss. Frankly, I don't find it works well in any case. I have a D7000 with "Flash Commander" built-in, plus SB-800 and SB-600 speedlights. Despite that, I just bought a set of Phottix Ares wireless transmitters because I was sick of Nikon's CLS failing to trigger the remote flashes so often.

My transmitters do not support TTL, and I admit it would be a nice feature, but it also isn't too hard to chimp a few test shots and dial in the right flash output manually. Once it's set, you're good to go. The TTL-enabled transmitters are pricey.

This assumes you're indoors and aren't contending with fluctuating ambient light levels, of course. I could see the value of wireless TTL flash increasing if you were outdoors. Outdoors is particularly where Nikon CLS has the most problems, too.

I loved Nikon's CLS and miss it dearly on my Sony. The best part about CLS is that you can control all speedlights from the back of the camera, so if you have speedlights on light stands up high, you don't have to climb up to them or bring the stands down to adjust each one; just change the settings from the camera.

OP, I'd suggest getting a used SB-600 from KEH or something. Staying in the CLS family is just super easy and only really becomes an issue if you try to position your slave speedlight out of optical view of the master.