Met up with an old friend of mine to test out how my Nikon SB-900s fair as off camera flashes. It was great! It performed so much better than my old Vivitars. The flashes were triggered using a Pocket Wizard Mini TT1 with an AC3 mounted on it and a Flex TT5 as the receiver for each flash. This setup is pricey but it has a few perks.
If you use a flash or the Nikon SU-800 as the trigger, infrared light is the medium used to communicate with the receivers. The draw back of this is that you need to be aware of your line of sight as well as distance. Some people have also mentioned that the flashes have problems receiving the signals under bright light. I have yet to test that out and I’ll take their word for it.
A much more affordable work around is to use one of those china made triggers. I have been using the Yongnuo RF-602 wireless flash triggers for most of my shoots previously and it has yet to let me down. I even used it along side photographers using Pocket Wizard Plus II in forested environments while shooting for Red Bull Dark Knights. No problem. I dare say it’s probably the best choice as an affordable wireless flash trigger (maybe you can leave a comment if you know of another good flash trigger which as affordable).
Using the Pocket Wizard Mini TT1/Flex TT5 system has a few additional perks over the Yongnuo. Firstly, you can use the AC3 to control the power of the flashes remotely through radio frequency. Secondly, Speedlights can be set to work in i-TTL. Thirdly, you can fire your flashes at speeds beyond the usual X-Sync speeds.
Two Nikon SB-900s along with warming filters were used for all the shots. This allowed me to warm up the skin of the subject and give the skies the unreal blue though meddling with the white balance.
Darren Francis is an 
