Nikon D800 CLS issue – feedback from Nikon HQ !
A few minutes ago I received a message from Nikon Germany. They got word from Nikon Japan about the CLS issue I reported. The engineers at Nikon were finally able to reproduce the problem !
Failure to trigger the slave flashes with the internal master flash can occur under the following conditions:
- Internal camera flash is configured as master in mode “M” or “–”
- External flashes in groups A or B are in mode “M” or “–” (I don’t know why they included “–” in the message, because in this setting the slave flashes are not supposed to fire anyway….)
Nikon recommends the following steps as a workaround while a solution is being developed:
- Set internal flash to “TTL” mode or
- Fire the external flashes in groups A and B in mode “TTL” or “AA”.
At last the prove that I am not an idiot and that there is truly a genuine bug in the D800, hooray !
I did some smaller shootings in the last weeks and the flashes were triggered fairly reliably. There were roughly 4-5 misfires in 100 shots. Which is not much but still annoying. During the shootings I realized by myself that setting the slave flashes to “TTL” results in a 100% trigger accuracy. But since I am accustomed to manually set the flash power (“M” mode) the problem still occurred.
Let’s wait and see, I see another firmware update on the horizon !
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Thank you! I did not experience the problem (yet) because I had the built-in flash set to TTL so far. Cheers!
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Great information. Going to TTL mode works for me too. I just turn power down to compensation to -3.0 so the on camera flash doesn’t really contribute and I am back on track. Still hope for a firmware fix.
Was having the same issue with my new D800, glad to hear it wasn’t my flashes. Thanks for the great information.
Great! Thank you so much! I was having the same issue and it was bugging me big time!
Has this issue been corrected in a firm ware update yet?
There has been a firmware update, but it has not officially addressed the issue. Failure to trigger the external flashes still occurs.
I just had the same issue on a test shoot and was completely baffled. Its not good to hear that Nikon have not sorted it yet I ve have not as yet tried the alternative. Can anyone recommend any remote triggers other than pocket wizards.
I have the problem. I used the D800 with a SB600 and two Sb200 – with my D80 worked every time with my D800 worked then nothing. Would only fire if in commander mode I set Groups A and B to — and fired just the internal flash in TLL – which is obviously a waste of time as this is the same as just TTL. Hope this gets fixed soon!