MacBook aNd I: Nikon Speedlight SB-400

I bought a Speedlight SB-400 for my D50, mainly because I want to use bounce flash. More on that below. First, some comments on the picture.

This picture is strange, because the 3 cases in the background appear black to my eyes, like the flash body, but in the picture they're reddish. The picture was illuminated by sunlight from a window and white balance was set to automatic. Why does the colour of the cases change but not of the flash? Using fluorescent white balance looks slightly more accurate:

Anyway, the SB-400 comes with a nice snug case. It closes with a zip, the outside seems to be made of nylon, and the inside of a material similar to those red brushes for clothes lint.

I compared prices at 3 stores before buying. I knew Ted's was selling at $136. Michaels wanted $249 and JB-HiFi's best price was $225, so I went straight to Ted's after that.

The SB-400 is a very basic flash. It works well with Nikon's i-TTL system, but I wish it had a test button and slave flash capability. I think I can get it to test fire by shorting some of the pins, but I haven't tried. I found out you can get adaptors to put on the bottom of the flash to turn it into a slave flash. These don't need any batteries, and are only about AUD$7 (including shipping)! Search for "flash slave trigger" on eBay.

The first picture was taken using the "normal", direct flash and the second using bounce flash. I was a bit too close, so the bounce flash didn't work so well. These pictures, taken in store before I bought the flash, show the difference between direct and bounce flash.

The first picture shows how normal flash looks like. The second picture, taken with bounce flash, doesn't look like it was illuminated using flash at all, it looks like normal light.

The SB-400 can be angled at 0°, 60°, 75° and 90°. I think it's for different distances to the subject.