The Bloog

…or How to temporarily turn off the SB-800 flash on the D300

Although the show didn’t announce itself too exciting, I decided to grab some gear and go; at least to take some pictures if for nothing else. I had the D300 with the SB-800 and the 50mm f1.8 on, with the 18-70mm in the pocket for some wide shots (like the yellow Lamborghini one). I wanted primarily to see how the 50mm will make itself useful. The show floor lighting was fairly dim: black or dark carpets and walls with high tube lighting in most places. 

For those cases when some fill light was required, I had the SB-800 to help. There was one aspect of using the flash that was particularly annoying to work with: turning the flash on or off for different shots. For example, I would take a shot without flash and then I wanted to see how it would look with the flash, so I would turn the SB-800 on, take the shot, then turn it off to move to a different car. Too much button pressing between shots that required me to take the camera away from the eye. I remember wishing that there was a way I could just select whether the flash should fire or not without turning it on and off. Recently I just found out, to my pleasant surprise, that there is! Because the D300 makes it possible.

The Nikon D300 has two buttons close to the lens that can be customized with different functionalities: the Fn button and what is by default the Depth of Field Preview button. The Fn button, I kept it as Auto Bracketing when used with the command dial, and as Spot Metering when simply pressed. Here’s where the magic happens though: for the Preview button, on press, I assigned it to Flash Off, which does exactly what it says; doesn’t fire the flash if the button is pressed. Just what I wanted… now I can simply leave the SB-800 on and if I don’t want it to fire, I just press the button before pressing the shutter release. Perfect! 

See the pictures from the car show below: