Nikon SB-26 Flash

Update at the bottom of this post.

A post at Strobist mentions a very interesting option for an off-camera flash. As a side note, if you want to learn more about good lighting, the Strobist blog is an excellent source and I highly recommend it. Anyway, the Nikon SB-26 flash is an excellent option on the used market for a number of reasons.

One, it has great manual settings. Two, it is easily connected to a PocketWizard through its built-in PC sync socket. Both of these characteristics are shared with the Nikon SB-24, SB-25, and SB-28 as well as some new models. The unique part about the SB-26 is that it is the only one of these four to contain a built-in optical slave. This is an extremely handy feature.

For example, you might be lighting a portrait which needs a background light. You already have three PocketWizards, one for the camera and two for your Vivitar 285HV units. This only gives you two lights and you really need that third background light. In comes a Nikon SB-26 with its optical slave. The optical slave would easily be triggered by the light from the other two flashes and would make your setup a great success.

Another post at Strobist talks more about the Nikon SB-24 flash. Everything applies to the SB-25, SB-26, and SB-28 as well. Each of the updated models just adds some new feature(s).

Update: I found another post at Strobist that gives some links to a site that shows details on all of the older Nikon flashes. Here are some of the same links from his post: SB-24, SB-25, SB-26, and SB-28.