D100 Lounge: SB-80DX

Heavy-Duty Shoe

The SB-80DX Shoe is quite sturdy

The shoe of the SB-80DX is very sturdy and built to survive many mounts and dismounts from any D-series camera. If anything is going to survive from heavy use, it's the shoe. This is a good thing, since the shoe is the piece that will be used the most. The contacts of the SB-80DX are very firm and have strong springs to insure contact when attaching to your D100. I did notice an unintentional habit that I have yet to completely get over. When you attach the SB-80DX to the D100, be sure the speedlight is pushed in all the way. The SB-80DX will appear to be firmly attached to your camera, and for all intents and purposes it is, but all 7 contacts will not be touching their proper contact points located on the camera. If you wonder why you can't get D-TTL and your SB-80DX is working perfectly otherwise, this may be the reason.

SB-80DX Chamber Lid Issue

Notice the small plastic attachment to the Chamber Lid

No accessory is made to be perfect for the comings and goings of a photographer, and the SB-80DX is no exception. The Battery Chamber Lid has a rather inferior way of staying attached to the main body of the speedlight. A small, thin strip of plastic is supposed to keep the Battery Chamber Lid attached to the flash at all times. While this may not be considered too important on the scale of speedlight functionality, it can become a nightmare if the attachment is broken while in the middle of an event. As a photographer, you are well aware, photos don't come handed to you on a plate that says, "Take Me". Sometimes you're in a rush to get the photos and the event just happens to unfold rather quickly. This is the time where the Battery Chamber Lid can become broken off, in the middle of changing batteries, and you will not only have no memory of changing the batteries, but have absolutely no idea of what happened to the Battery Chamber Lid.

To give you an example, there was a major local fire a few years ago. I just happened to have my camera equipment with me at the time (an Olympus E-10), and arrived at the scene. Nothing too chaotic, but there were a lot of local residents who were watching and meandering about, police cars getting positioned, fire trucks getting their positions, and so on. Well, I was there for about two hours shooting photos, and I changed my batteries twice. I also had to change lenses continuously, due to close-ups. Lens off. Lens on. Lens off. Lensonlensofflensonlensoff. It was just crazy.

So, I get home, and lenses are in the pockets of my jacket that I didn't know could even fit in there. My FL-40 flash was lost for about 20-minutes before I discovered it was in a hidden pocket in my jacket as well. Batteries were in my pants, in my camera bag, and in my jacket. The point is this. The SB-80DX Chamber Lid can easily be broken off in a somewhat demanding situation where you are not completely focusing on the workings of your equipment, and are instead, focusing more on the event you're taking photos of.

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