143/365: Scale.

Subaru is my smallest client...hehe. Dumb. Not bad for a 3-inch toy car, eh? Sits on my buddy Joe's mantle (he drives an identical, life-size version). With a Canon 580EX2 in a Lumiquest Softbox III, held above the car and camera, tethered to the 5Dmk2's hotshoe with a E-TTL extension cable, I was able to get this (The mantle and wall are painted white). Perfect for something small and close, but what if you need to get the flash further away, and can't afford a Pocket Wizard set or another flash? Hit the jump for a really cool DIY hack to extend your flash control...

Ok, so I DID NOT come up with this hack. I first heard of it on STROBIST, but that was just a link to THIS POST. And I'm sure there are multiple examples of it elsewhere on the internet, but Joe and I did it yesterday, so I figured I'd share our experience. Here's the gist.

(Editor's Note: Since a lot of the visitors to this site are non-photographers, I like to give the full uninitiated explanation. Sorry if you already know all this stuff.)

When a Canon flash is mounted onto a Canon camera, they are able to talk to one another when making pictures. Using your different shooting modes on the camera and the flash, you, Dear Photographer, get to decide HOW they talk to each other, and whether or not they do things automatically for you. So, for example, if you were in full-auto mode (aka Green Box) or Program Mode, and your flash was set to automatic (aka E-TTL), when you press the shutter, the camera has already thought about what shutter speed and aperture combo it's going to use, and has told the flash this, and the flash says, "Ok, I'll turn on and add some light, you tell me when it's enough," and when the camera sees that the exposure is getting to be about right with the added flash, it tells the flash, "Ok that's enough, you can turn off now," and then it finishes the exposure. This all happens in the instant of the exposure itself. (Note: This is just how I understand it, in fact it may be wrong, but you get the idea). Now, this is for a flash that's mounted directly onto the hotshoe of the camera; when using remote flashes, you either are using a 'dumb' trigger that just tells the flash ON or OFF and therefore the flash power must be determined and set manually by the photographer, or you have to use multiple units by the same manufacturer that can 'talk' to each other using Infrared, like a TV remote.

But, with a few exceptions, on-camera flash tends to look like poo. Light gets much more beautiful and/or interesting when it's coming from some direction other than the camera. One piece of gear that can help is an E-TTL extension cord. This basically extends the proprietary hotshoe connection from your camera across a length of coiled cable, but for the most part, they are pretty short, 1-2 feet. Joe McNally has like 10 of them that he can just link up to extend the length, but he's much better, and better paid, than you or I. I used the Canon-made variety for the car shot above, but that puppy is more expensive than it should be, and like I say, it's short. So what do you do? Hack the MoFo!

Joe did all the work, all I did was show him the original post and document. First we started with the 3rd-party, off-brand version of the E-TTL cord for Canon, which is MUCH cheaper for the same thing:

Which he promptly CUT IN HALF with wire cutters.

Inside the shielded cable are 6 individually shielded wires, which are the separate rivers of data that the flash and camera use to speak whatever language they use with one another. What we are trying to do is extend these 6 information veins, and what's sweet is that you can do it in a modular way that lets you customized the length at any time. To add plug-and-play functionality to this cable, enter the Cat5e network wall jack:

This is an ethernet cable jack, which gives you eight separate channel connectors, more than enough to attach the six from our cord. Joe went right to it and separated the small wires into their little ports and began punching them down to attach the jack. Ended up like this:

MAKING SURE that both ends used the same arrangement of wires in the jack ports, he opened the second end and did the same with another jack. Then he added some dollops of super-glue at the punch-in points to seal up the connections, similar to how Monster Cables embed their solder joints in clear epoxy. He did this BEFORE we tested it, which was essentially dumb, but he was confident in his work (he's done much more complicated) and was justified in that, since it did end up working...

So now you just add any length of network cable (up to 50' has been confirmed to work) and you've got mobile E-TTL capability! You can also use this setup to operate the flash in manual mode, and even use the multi-strobic setting.

There's the network cable trailing off to me, holding the 580ex2 with Lumiquest Softbox III attached.  The final step we took was to actually seal the whole deal up with JB Weld, the very same epoxy compound that held together the cracked oil pan on my 1994 Ford Escort Wagon for eight years.  You could also use electrical tape instead, but we like to take it to the extreme. All in all, a very easy and CHEAP hack for off-camera flash, with the option of automatic or manual control from camera. Gets my vote.

-llg