Just about small enough to squeezeinto a coat pocket, this is a travelfriendly flashgun that also features a built-in triple-LED constant light. In other areas, the SB-500 is a particularly bare-bones affair. There’s no zoom facility for the head, which has a fixed focal length equivalent of 24mm, or 16mm for DX format cameras. There’s no flip-out wide-angle diffuser or catchlight card, found on most current flashguns. At least you get a full 90 degrees of bounce and 180 degrees of swivel, to both left and right.
Around the back, the control panel is simplistic, and uses a few status LEDs instead of the more usual LCD panel. As such, most settings and adjustments need to be applied from menus in the host camera. An infrared wireless remote mode is featured (channel 3 only), but the commander mode only works with fairly recent Nikons.
The LED array is a plus point for short-range stills and video. A button on the rear panel enables you to switch the lamp on or off, as well as cycling through quarter, half and full power settings, the last of which gives a 100 Lux intensity, with the same beam angle as the flash tube. However, you can’t use the LED at the same time as the flash. This could have been handy for providing fill-in light, or for AF-assist illumination in the absence of a red AF-assist lamp.