Simon-Ph wrote:
> STE2 is not an option right now because of budget. I would like to
> use my new 550ex farther than 2-3 feet off the camera for
> portraits. I remember that someone knows how to rig the Canon
> Off-Shoe Cord 2 to make it longer and still maintain E-TTL. Please
> help me by posting detailed instructions because I am clueless when
> it comes to hacking electronic equipments. Or is there another
> longer E-TTL compatible cable?
>
> I already owned a 550ex and 420ex. This is the cheapest way I can
> learn portrait lighting without investing in lighting kits.
>

I suspect it is me that you're thinking of, so this is how I did it;

I cut the Off-Shoe Cord cable roughly in the middle, and fitted a five-pin mini-DIN plug (like a modern PC keyboard plug) to one end, and a corresponding socket to the other, both by simply soldering the wires to the terminals in the plug/socket.
Having done one end, I fitted the other whilst the plug and socket were connected, so that I could be certain that I had the right wires connecting, for obvious reasons ;-)

I then tested the cable, make sure that it still worked - no small relief, I can tell you ;-)

Once that was done, I made a patch cable with 6-core cable and another mini-DIN plug/socket pair.

I can now use the cord at its original length (less the bit that was lost when I cut and stripped it back) or with an extension i the middle. My extension is somewhere around 10 metres, I guess, but any reasonable length should be OK.

HTH
Chris