The JDM guys have the modding scene wrapped up for cars, so I'm moving on to cameras.

Well, this was a pretty simple mod, but I thought I'd share it with you guys anyway. An external flash is a great addition to your camera bag. It lets you bounce your flash so that you can avoid the "dear in the headlights" look that you get with an in-camera flash.

Bouncing a flash is only part of the fun when it comes to lighting. When you use an off-camera flash cord, you can direct the flash at any angle, independent of the camera position. This is great for getting creative with your flash photography. You can do side lighting, back lighting, angled fills, etc.

Canon makes an off-camera flash cord for their EX series of flashes. It's creatively named "Off-Camera Shoe Cord 2". Unfortunately, it's designed for wedding photogs who use a flash bracket, so the cord is only 18" long. That's pretty restrictive, so I modded it so I could extend it to any length I need.





This is what you'll need to do the mod yourself:
Parts
- One flash cord
- 2 male Din 5 or Din 6 connectors
- 2 female Din 5 or Din 6 connectors
- x feet of 22ga 6 conductor wire (unshielded is fine)
Tools
- wire strippers
- soldering iron
- solder
- soldering jig (two handed pinchy thing)

Basically all you have to do is cut the flash cord in half and solder a male connector on one half and a female connector on the other half. This will let you connect the two together to the original lenght if needed. Then, you make a patch cable of whatever length you need. Follow my color codes below so you don't get mixed up:




You really don't need a DIN-6 connector, since you're only using 5 wires plus a ground, but you're definitely going to need a 6 conductor wire. The only thing you don't want to do is use a mini-din connector because it will not let you extend the cable as far (too much resistance). The cable I bought matched color for color with the wires inside the flash cord, but you might not be as lucky. The patch cable I made is about 10 feet long and the flash fires fine. I don't know how long you can go, but you're welcome to test the limits.

Cheers,

Dan

 

Nice mod. Of couse if you have a Nikon D70 or other Nikon DSLR that supports it, just get a Nikon SB600 or SB800 and get RF-fired off camera flash built in.

Mike

 

Well aren't we fancy.

 

Looks like someone is ahead of me, I just bought a $20 tripod lol, looks like a mod that is well worth it though

 

nice///