Hi Marty,

Thanks again for all of your previous help. It is now time for me to give serious consideration to proper FLASH capability with my D60 and 300 F4.

I don't want to spend an arm and a leg on flash equipment, nor do I want to be stupid, buying a nice lens and then limiting its potential with a substandard flash unit.

I currently own a Vivatar 283 Thyristor which used to work fine on my Pentax ZX7. Any chance, under the right conditions, that this could work? It appears that its maximum range is 40 feet.

In addition to the appropriate flash unit itself, I need to give some attention to flash MOUNT. My medium duty Manfrotto tripod has a simple Bogen platform head, with quick-change plates.

Here are the typical uses for the flash. I'm finding that. although I can hand-carry my D60/300 F4/TC 1.4, I don't like to. It’s a little bulky, and, if I need to go to manual focus, it's very hard for me to focus and hold the camera at the same time. So we can say that, whenever I'll be using the flash unit, it will be with the camera mounted on a tripod. Camera-to-subject distance for smaller birds will be 10-50 feet. For shooting flying birds (herons, ducks, hawks), the distance will be c. 60 to 120 feet.

I'll probably buy from B&H or Adorama, new or used.

PART II

I've apparently misplaced my D60 owner's manual. Is there a location on line that has a complete manual through which I can browse? My most burning question at this moment is how to use the D60's built-in flash on back-lit subjects, especially birds and portraits.

Bill