Nikon D300 User Manual page 760

Nikon Creative Lighting System
(CLS)
(User's Manual – D300S page 348; D300 page 357)
CLS is an advanced wireless lighting technology that allows
you to use your imagination in designing "creative" lighting
arrangements. No wires are used since the CLS-compatible
remote flash units are controlled by a "commander device", or
what Nikon refers to as a "master flash unit". You can use the
Commander mode built into the D300(S), or you can use an
Accessory shoe-mounted commander such as the SB-900
Speedlight, SB-800 Speedlight, or SU-800 Wireless
Speedlight Commander unit. The SB-600 only has a remote
mode, so it cannot be used as a commander unit.
We'll only consider the built-in Commander mode in this
chapter. I suggest buying a copy of The Nikon Creative
Lighting System by Mike Hagen (also published by Rocky
Nook and NikoniansPress). It goes into excellent detail on
how to use CLS with multiple banks of various external
Nikon Speedlight flash units.
Using CLS, you can easily experiment with setups and flash
output. You can obtain a visual preview of how things will
look by pressing the Depth-of-field preview button, which
will fire the pulsed modeling capability within Nikon's
Speedlights.
There is no need to figure complex lighting ratios when you
can control your flash banks right from the camera and see
the results immediately. CLS simplifies the use of multiple
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