Dear China, Please Make This.



Whoops, my bad. Lemme rephrase that:

親愛的中國,請讓這些長長的特殊的同步線之一。這將讓攝影師輕鬆地使用他們與他們的新相機的遙控閃光燈。

Now, here's why:
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First, to avoid any confusion, what we are talking about is a coiled, 30-foot, one-piece hot shoe-to-mini-jack sync cord. The TTL connections you see on my DIY job are superfluous and not used. I made this from a YongNuo 30-ft OCF cord and a minijack plug.

With this I can easily, cheaply and reliably sync any of my cameras to my Einsteins or my LP180s or any other flash that has a ⅛-inch jack.

Why is this a big deal? First, it's a big deal because many cameras no longer come with PC jacks, which kinda suck if they did anyway. At top of this list is my sync-at-any-speed Fuji X100s. But also the similarly capable Nikon D70s, too.

ANd frankly, this cord is better/more reliable than a PC cord at both ends.

Can I put a PW in the hot shoe and another on the flash? Yep. But due to the inherent delays in the electronics and relays, they introduce an inherent lag of a few microseconds. We're talking micro-seconds, but when you are shaving sync speed and fast t.1 times, microseconds matter.

The net effect is that your wireless sync speeds are capped at about 1/1000th of a second sync even with a PW and a sync-anywhere camera. Officially, the cap is 1/500th with a leaf shutter. But I have found there is a little wiggle room there.

Second, yes, I know I could do the same thing with a Universal Translator nub and a mini-to-mini cord. But this is more robust and heavy-duty. And would likely have been much more so had I not made it myself.

Speaking of that, I snipped and soldered flash end of the OCF cord to a DIY miniplug from Radio Shack. In retrospect, I should have mated a pre-existing ⅛-inch plug-terminated wire to the OCF cord, mid-wire. Better strain relief and reliability.

I put a gob of red gaff tape on the flash end, both to color code it and to give it some strain relief. But I think factory vinyl might have been better for the strain at the end of the wire.

Anyway, please make this China. If you do, and it doesn't suck (i.e., make it of decent quality!) I will make sure everyone knows about it.
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p.s. Sorry for the machine translation above, China. But at this point in my photographic career, I feel as if I owe you a few.


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