Why does my Nissin Di866 fire too early in off-camera slave mode on a Nikon D810?
Asked 10/3/2015
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I’m using two Nissin Di866 flashes off-camera with a Nikon D810. One works normally, but the other fires before the shutter seems to capture it. It appears to be triggering on a pre-flash rather than the main flash.
I’m using the camera’s pop-up flash to trigger it remotely. What flash/slave mode should the Di866 be in, and what should the D810 be set to so the flash doesn’t fire early?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
10y ago
2 Answers
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There are three possible ways you can remotely trigger the Di-866 from the D810's pop-up flash. The most probable issue you have is that you've set the pop-up flash to one system, while you've set the flash to a different one. Here are the three possible optical slave options you can use, and how you need to get them to match.
CLS
Nikon's Creative Light System is a "smart" optical slaving system that can communicate the majority of the flash hotshoe communication protocol. It uses multiple preflashes--think of it like Morse code with lights. If you've set your D810's pop-up flash into wireless commander mode, then you're trying to use CLS from the camera, and the Di-866 needs to be in TTL Wireless slave mode to properly communicate, otherwise, it will go off early.
See page 24 of the Di-866 manual.
"Dumb" optical slave with a single TTL preflash
The pop-up flash can also be taken out of CLS commander mode, and just act like a regular flash without the wireless communication preflashes. However, if you have the pop-up flash set to use iTTL automatic power control, there will still be a single preflash for metering TTL. In this case, the Nissin Di-866 has to be set to SD (Slave Digital) slave mode. It will then fire on the second flash burst it sees.
See pg. 18 of the Di-866 manual.
"Dumb" optical slave without preflash
The pop-up flash can also be put into M mode, where you dial in the power level directly, and this will eliminate any preflashes. In this case, the Di-866 needs to be set to the SF (Slave Film) slave mode to fire correctly.
See pg. 18 of the Di-866 manual.
Originally by user27440. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user27440
10y ago
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Yes—this usually happens when the camera and flash are using different optical trigger systems. The D810’s pop-up flash can trigger remotes in different ways, and if the Di866 is set to the wrong slave mode it may fire on a pre-flash instead of the exposure flash.
Most likely, your D810 pop-up flash is in Nikon CLS/Commander mode, which uses multiple pre-flashes for communication. In that case, the Di866 must be set to its Nikon TTL wireless/CLS slave mode. If it’s instead in a simple optical slave mode, it will fire too soon.
So the fix is to make the trigger mode on the camera match the slave mode on the flash:
- If using Nikon wireless commander/CLS on the D810, set the Di866 to TTL wireless slave.
- If using a basic optical trigger mode, use the matching simple slave mode on the flash and avoid TTL/commander pre-flash behavior.
Since one flash behaves differently from the other, also compare both units’ slave settings directly. The earlier battery issue may indicate a separate problem, but the early firing itself is typically a mode mismatch.
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