The SB-600 is probably the flash I prefer the most. It is smaller than the SB-800 and lighter, and only lacks very few of its features of its bigger brother. It can be used remotely using the built in flash on my D200 as a master. If all you do is studio work then I would suggest getting an SB-800 as some of it's features are designed for the studio.

The flash is rated at GN98 at ISO100 at 35mm. It has a built-in zoom that ranges from 24 to 85mm and a wide angle diffuser built into the head. The head swivels left and right as well as vertically.

It has a manual mode for controlling the flash and a slave mode. The manual mode is useful in some difficult lighting conditions where the light is messing with your exposure. This has happened to me only twice that I recall. The wireless mode works very well, even when the flash is not in direct sight of the commander flash.

The flash takes any type of AA battery, though you will require 4 of them. Recycling is near instantaneous. Turning off the camera means the flash also turns off, hence saving you the hassle of holding down the power button on the flash. Turn the camera back on and your flash powers back up. Cool. Alkaline batteries recycle the quickest, but Lithium batteries will last a lot longer.

The LCD is easy to read even in bright light. The backlight comes on when needed and can also be controlled from the camera body using the same switch for the camera top LCD light.

The flash mounts to the camera using a metal plate and a quick release lock. There is no plastic screw wheel like on some of the other flashes out there. With the quick release it is easy to get the flash on and off camera quickly with the least amount of hassle

Flash exposure can be dialed from -3 to +3, this is on top of what can be set on the camera body. Lots of leeway here.

The SB-600 has quite a few custom settings that can be accessed by holding down the Zoom and "-" buttons together for a couple of seconds. Here is a list of possible custom settings: Wireless mode, AF illuminator, power standby, zoom, LCD illumination, sound, and auxiliary ready light. It does take some time to figure all of these out but generally once set I don't play with them.

Overall this is a very good flash for all situations, though for studio work I would use the SB800. For travel however, the 600 is perfect.

Cheers