Nikon SB R1C1

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CNET editors' rating: 4.0 stars Excellent
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Product summary

CNET Editors' ChoiceAug 07

The good: Wireless i-TTL operation; compact size; comes with plenty of accessories, including mounting rings for lenses, stands for the flash units, filter holders, and more.

The bad The bad: Kit available only with two flash heads; flashes and trigger powered by CR123A batteries; slightly clunky case.

The bottom line: The Nikon SB R1C1 is one of the most versatile macro lighting solutions we have seen to date. When paired with a Nikon SLR and macro lens, it can have you creating incredible macro photos in no time.

Price range: $609.95

CNET editors' review

Reviewed by: Philip Ryan
Reviewed on: 08/17/2007

Photo gallery:
R1C1 sample images

One of the most difficult lighting situations you can encounter in photography is a macro shot. Since the depth of field becomes so shallow when shooting close up with a macro lens, you often end up having to shoot at very small apertures (the ones with higher numbers, such as f/22 or f/36) if you want more than just a small sliver of your subject to be in focus. This means you need a lot of light on your subjects. At the same time, since you're usually so close to your subject, it's easy to block the light from whatever you're using to illuminate the scene. The typical solution for macro lighting is a ring light, which mounts to the front of your macro lens and is tethered by a cable to a controller unit mounted in your camera's hot shoe.

However, with ring lights you're limited to a handful of ratio settings between a pair of strobe heads built into the ring light if you want to vary the look of the lighting. Nikon's R1C1 Close-up Speedlight Commander Kit includes a pair of small SB-R200 flash units, along with an SU-800 wireless trigger, so you can place the lights wherever you need them, including the mounting ring that comes with the kit, and control them from the trigger that mounts on your SLR's hot shoe.

A simple, but effective, set of controls on the back of the SU-800 makes it easy to set lighting ratios between groups of Nikon Speedlights or to control their output manually.

One of the nicest parts of this kit is that the SU-800 trigger that comes with it can also control Nikon's larger SB-800 and SB-600 flash units. That makes it very easy to use one of these larger flashes to illuminate the background in your shots, which often goes dark in macro photography. Of course, you can also add more SB-R200 flashes to the pair included in the kit. In fact, as many as eight R200s can fit on the kit's ring, though Nikon doesn't recommend mounting that many on some lenses, since too much extra weight can affect the ability of certain lenses to focus properly.

If you don't want to use the ring to hold the R200s, you can also mount them on the stands included in the kit. The stands won't work with larger Speedlights, but they do have tripod sockets in the bottom, so you get an added level of versatility in placement, especially if you mate them with a GorillaPod or other similar device. The kit also includes other accessories, including adapter rings for various lenses, a set of four colored filters, filter holders, a flexible arm with clips at either end, a diffuser panel, clip-on angled diffusers for extreme closeup work, a panel to block an SLR's built-in flash (more on this later), soft cases for the flashes and trigger, and a case to hold all the pieces. While the big case is a bit clunky, it does include room for a third SB-R200 and all accompanying accessories for it, should you choose to add one.

See more CNET content tagged:: Nikon Corp.,; SLR,; kit,; stand,; shoe

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