DIY Off-Camera Flash Cord: You Choose the Length

I'm posting this here cause I figure if I'm so stoked at finding out this is possible, someone else might be too!

So I've been reading the Strobist blog (http://strobist.blogspot.com) and in the process of adding strobe gear to my collection I was looking for a way to get my flash off camera without shelling out 500 bucks for a pair of pocket wizards. I found the OC-E3 cord locally for a bit more money than I wanted to pay for it, but as is typical for me, I shelled out the money cause I really wanted the gear. This cord is only two feet long though, so it's quite limited and I wanted more.

I've been trying to build an adapter like the one demonstrated on the blog: converting PC to household at the camera and back again at the flash and using a double-female plain old extension cord between the camera and the flash. My flash is a Canon, however, so it only has the hotshoe connection. I'm thinking "Man, if only I could get a hotshoe to household converter," and then this develops into "Man, I could probably MAKE one if I just had any type of device with a hotshoe on it." On my way to the pawn shop to check their selection of photo equipment, I realized I already HAD that in my OC-E3 cable (Duh!) and headed home to destroy my 100 dollar piece of camera equipment.

Just to be on the safe side, I googled it first, and figured out that more than a few others before me have done exactly that, but much smarter than I was thinking of doing it. I found some photos on Flickr of some Cat-5 ethernet ports wired into an OC-E3 cable, and a few other sites confirmed that it did actually work, so I tried it out.

A trip to Radio Shack, a couple bucks, and a few minutes of careful labor later, and I've got this:




Note: If you haven't ever connected a Cat-5 plug, it's not very hard. You can buy a couple and practice on a section of Cat-5 if you'd like, you'll get the hang of it pretty quickly. Google will find you many walkthroughs and how-tos. In my case, I had five wires inside with a bundle of sheathing wires that I also connected all the way through (Just twist them into one wire and connect them like the others).

My first attempt didn't work due to my cheap RJ-45 connectors not cutting through the plastic on the wires, but I tried again, this time manually stripping the wires before punching them in, and everything works now, including ETTL. Using different lengths of Cat-5 cable, I can now get my flash pretty much any distance I want away from my camera (within reasonable cable limits of course - others have reported over 75 feet).

My setup cost me considerably more than it COULD have if I could have found the OC-E3 cable at a decent price here in AK, but it's still several hundred dollars cheaper than a set of pocket wizards, and with my Canon 550EX I can trigger more flashes wirelessly without having to have one directly on the camera. I believe overall this cost me about $110, and 100 of that is the price of the OC-E3 cable in Alaska's finest photo shop. :dunno

So that demonstrates how with a tiny bit of electrical work, you can extend an OC-E3 cable to pretty much any length you'll need. Like I said, I was totally stoked to find this, so I wanted to pass it along!