The overheating issue is a puzzler for me. I shoot rather hurridely at times, strings of 20 pics in half a minute are not unusual. The only time my SB-900 has overheated, is when I was in direct sunlight.
The first day I used the SB-900, I had no problems with overheating at all. The second day was one of those 80 degree SoCal winter blessings, and the flash overheated. I quickly swapped out to an SB-800. My SB-900 was too new to mess with.
The following weekend was also warm. In anticipation of trouble, I disabled the thermal shut off. However when I got the high temp warning, I chickened out and swapped to an SB-800. The next day, I paid attetion to the thermo indicator between shots. I found that simply by shading the head of the SB-900, I could keep the temp readings under control, and I had no issues.
This past Sunday was breezy and cool in SoCal, but sunny. I negllected to shade my SB-900 and began getting the annoying audible hi-temp allert. I disabled that too, shaded the head of the flash when idle, and the problem went away. I subsequently got over 800 M 1/1 pops.
I am not a hyper analytical sort. But I would love to figure out how to compare the internal temps of the SB-900 with an SB-800. There must be a way to put a temp sensor inside the units to monitor and compare the actual temperatures. Can anyone recommend some kit that might work? It seems to me that if the amount of energy supplied to the flashes is roughly equal, so to should be the heat produced. If the SB-800 doesn't mellt at XX.X degrees, neither should the SB-900.
On a more absurd note, I plan on fashioning a little sun hat for my SB-900. I am thinking one of those wittle umbwellas from a tourist trap Mai Tai might do the trick.... Las Vegas will be the perfect laboratory to research tropical cocktails to find the best umbrella for the SB-900.
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Y.ou Will Never Walk Alone
