Nikon - Speedlight SB600 Review

My wife and I both have our own camera outfits. While I generally use a Canon G7 semi-pro compact camera, she has a beefy Nikon D200 dSLR. To go with her Nikon camera, she got a Nikon Speedlight SB-600 flash unit. The Nikon SB-600 sells for about $220 at Amazon, and it represents the middle of Nikon's flash range.

What it is

The Nikon Speedlight SB-600 is a flash unit that fits on top of the camera in a mount called a "hotshoe." Not only does the hotshoe provide mechanical support for the flash, it also has several electrical contacts that allow the camera to "talk" to the flash. The SB-600 holds four AA batteries -- we use good-quality rechargeables that last for as many as 500 flashes. Between the batteries and the Nikon SB-600's beefy construction, the unit weighs a pound or so.

The flash head on the Nikon SB-600 can be swiveled and pointed in any direction, from forward to backward to straight up. There is a small pull-out plastic lens that's used to spread the light out for wide-angle shots. On the back of the SB-600 are several buttons and an LCD display that allow for considerable adjustment in the strength and timing of the flash. Finally, the Nikon SB-600 can be used as a slave flash and can be triggered wirelessly by the built-in flash in many Nikon cameras (including the D200).

Using it

The Nikon Speedlight SB-600 works perfectly with the Nikon D200 camera... usually. The camera communicates with the SB-600 to set the flash strength and focus, and the SB-600 can throw light for 50 feet or more. It is heavy and makes an already heavy camera even more bulky and awkward. However, when the SB-600 works properly, it is well mated with the D200 and it does a fine job. Faces are well lit and the SB-600 puts a lot of attractive sparkle in eyes. The color of the flash works well with daylight, and the SB-600 fills in shadows so that you'd never realize they were there.

There is a frustrating glitch, however. Occasionally -- perhaps one in 10 uses -- the SB-600 will get out of sync with the camera and pictures come out dark. It's as if there is no flash at all, although you can see the flash going off. Of course, this is always at some important time when you really need the flash. My wife's frantic efforts to reset and re-sync the flash/camera usually don't work and she has to resort to the less competent flash that comes with the D200 camera. And that's not why she paid $220 for an external flash unit.

Eventually, the SB-600 flash unit and D200 camera will sync up and start working properly again. Then it will fail again. Researching this problem online, my wife discovered that others have exactly the same problem. The only fix is to send the flash unit off for repair, at a cost of $125 to $150 -- more than half the cost of a new Nikon Speedlight SB-600. This is not the sort of problem we expected with the lightly used and well-cared-for SB-600.

Summary

When it works, the Nikon Speedlight SB-600 does a very good job. If I had dropped or otherwise abused the unit, I would shrug off my clumsiness not hold it agains the SB-600, However, my wife and I used the SB-600 perhaps 12 times before it had its first episode of falling out of sync with the camera. We thought there was a bad setting somewhere and eventually got out the various manuals. Following the setup instructions step by step, the SB-600 suddenly started working... just to fall out of sync again when we really needed it. After some more puzzling, an online search turned up this very problem with other Nikon users.

Considering the failure and fairly expensive repair, I do not recommend the Nikon Speedlight SB-600. There are other choices, including Nikon's SB-800 and several third-party flashes. Considering that the SB-600 let us down multiple times just when we needed it, I recommend you avoid the Nikon Speedlight SB-600.