Nikon SB-900 AF Speedlight Flash for Nikon Digital SLR Cameras

This is a great flash. I've had mine for a couple of months and have never seen the temperature readout move a millimeter, and I've pulled some pretty hot batteries out of this thing. Maybe the firmware updates have solved the problem. If it does ever cause a problem, I'll just disable the thermo protection. As another reviewer noted, do you really think this thing is so fragile compared to the SB800 it replaces? It's a software issue, not hardware - and it seems to be fixed.

I'm not going to reiterate what others have already said, but I will say this thing makes life so much easier, and Its so much nicer to use than the SB600s I use as fill. If I could justify the outlay, I'd buy two more tomorrow.

I've had some flakiness in flash but overall it works as expected. The creative system is very easy to setup and use, this is a huge feature. The movement of the remote mode to a the dail switch is very convenient. This things can burn through batteries on long shoots.

I was a happy Nikon SB-800 user for a couple of years, until someone stole it and I had to find a replacement to use with my (aging, but still great) Nikon D50.

I would have been perfectly happy to get another SB-800, but of course the SB-900 replaced it, and the discontinued SB-800 now regularly sells for about $300 more than the updated version. (Which makes zero sense, but nevermind.)

I was reluctant to upgrade to the SB-900, as it's a bit larger and a bit heavier than the SB-800 was. At the same time, the Nikon SB-600 is a bit less versatile, and while I don't really need the advanced capabilities of the SB-900 with the D50 today, I might in the future if I upgrade my camera body, so the SB-600 doesn't seem like a good investment.

So, I got the SB-900 last weekend. And hoo-boy was it worth it. Yes, it's nominally bigger & heavier than the SB-800, but in practice it doesn't feel like it is. The SB-800 felt a bit denser & heftier, while the SB-900 has a nicer balance with the weight. Maybe I'm just seduced by the edges being a bit curvier than the SB-800, which felt a bit more angular at the corners, but whatever it is, the physical size of the thing doesn't seem like it's going to be an issue.

The controls are simpler & clearer than they were with the SB-800, not least because the on/off switch is a paddle-switch now, rather than a push-button, which sounds trivial, but it's a nice change. The LCD display has been upgraded as well, with smaller, clearer fonts than before, while also having room for more information than the SB-800 display could present.

Another nice change: the flash head can now rotate 180º in both directions, unlike the SB-800, which could go to 180º one way, but only 90º the other way. Again, this isn't an earth-shattering change, but it's one of many nice touches over the previous model.

As for the actual photos, I haven't yet had a lot of time to put it through its paces, but so far the pictures I've taken have been at least as good as the ones I used to get with the SB-800, so we're off to a good start so far. I look forward to using this new flash for years to come.

After reading so many great reviews on different websites and apparently learning that the overheating problems with the SB-900 had been solved, I ordered one and it seemed fine after preliminary tests. But when I used it on a job, it quickly overheated and shut off. I let it cool down (per the thermometer icon and by touching the batteries) and then turned the thermal protection setting off (as other reviewers had suggested). After a few shots it overheated again. I then switched to my old, trusty SB-800 and it worked perfectly using identical batteries and under the same shooting conditions. I'm really disappointed since the SB-900's features are outstanding and it performed very well when it worked. Maybe I just got a bad unit, but I decided to return it and will look for an alternative.

Nikon fans, this the best flash by Nikon. Was leaning towards sb800 but as this was a newer model and smaller opted for this sb900.
There were lot of reviews which mentioned about the heating problem but I didn't use it to such an extent yet.
Very happy with the performance until now.