Book Review: The Nikon Creative Lighting System

For a long, long time I struggled to get a hang of Nikon's Creative Lighting System (CLS). A few years ago I bought a Nikon D70s and a Nikon SB-600 Speedlight Flash with the intention of playing with the possibilities of remotely controlling the flash unit without the need for extra (and expensive) hardware. The original manual unfortunately doesn't do a very good job at explaining how this works and the flash units have many settings hidden in the menus that make the whole thing quite confusing.

After a while, and a lot of trial and error (mostly error), I finally figured it out. But by then I was moving onto a Nikon D700 and bought an SB-800 to add to my portable setup. That's when things got frustrating. There are so many ways to control 2 or more flashes with these cameras that understanding all the possibilities is not easy. You can control both as remotes and trigger them with the on-camera flash, or you can use the SB-800 mounted on camera as a master-only to control the other one remotely, or you can use the SB-800 as an actual flash and master, etc. To make things even more confusing, the manuals aren't much help and the user interface on the flash units is not what I'd call user friendly.

I finally decided to search for some external help and came across The Nikon Creative Lighting System by Mike Hagen.This book makes it very easy to figure this all out. It’s pretty straightforward and easy to read, although it does repeat itself quite a bit. For example, there’s a complete chapter for each recent flash unit that Nikon produces and the explanations are thorough enough in each that there’s a lot of duplication of content. I guess if you only own one model it won’t matter and it actually makes sense. The book fully explains the modes and operations of each speedlight, including the SB600, SB800, SB900, SU800, SB200, and even the R1C1. It goes into how these integrate with most of the Nikon cameras of the last few years and briefly touches on some techniques on how to use the system.

The book is divided in 16 Chapters, roughly:

• Chapters 1-3: Quick Start Guide, CLS Background (what is it, how it works, compatibility with older cameras), and Flash Theory (f-stops, guide numbers, sync modes, etc.)
• Chapters 4-7: Buttons, Modes, Menus, and Operation for the SB-600, SB-800, SB-900, SU-800, SB-R200, and R1C1.
• Chapters 8-13: How to use CLS, what the beeps mean, white balance & gel usage, batteries, etc.
• Chapter 14: Case Studies and Examples (really basic stuff)
• Chapter 15: Product Recommendations (or more stuff to buy)
• Chapter 16: FAQ’s (only 15 very basic questions)

The book is great at helping you set up and understand CLS from a technical point of view. However, the application side of things is not a strong point. If you’re looking for creative inspiration you’ll be sadly disappointed. The photographs used for the examples are really not that interesting and in many cases are just plain bad. This is a shame really as the Creative Lighting System lets you do some pretty cool stuff.

In summary, if you’re looking for a book that gives you clear step-by-step instructions on how to set up the camera and flash units, you’ll be very happy with this one. It’s truly a replacement for the manuals when it comes to CLS. However, if you’re after creative applications or generic lighting techniques, this is not the book you want.