?'s for anyone that hacked the Canon Off-shoe cable

I'm about to hack an off shoe cable based on another thread here using various methods of extending the length beyond the 2 ft supplied. For anyone that has done this I have a couple of questions.

1. How does this effect ettl exposures, if at all? Dose the ettl system base its exposure on the amount of light only or does it assume that the flash is at or within two feet of the camera and make exposure decisions based on that?

Am assuming I can set the zoom manually since having the strobe at a different location then the camera I may want it to have different coverage.

2. Does this effect how the IR master/slave functions? In other words if I have the extended off camera cable on a 580 will it function the same as if it was on the camera as far as triggering slaves 580s/430s? I understand I'll still have to change flash settings at the master.

I guess I could wait until I make the cable and see for myself.

I did mine and use a 10 feet extension...no problems.

I found no difference with my cables.

But they didn't work at 40 feet. Cut it in half and it works at 20.

Thanks to all. Cosworth I was going for a 50ft cable maybe I'll have to rethink.

I did mine last week and it works with a 6 ft cable, but not with a 25 ft.

Signals thru the cable are simply data transmission, like computer cable to the printer....a longer cable does not affect the data content (although a long long cable can cause signal loss to the point of no data transmitted!)

Signal attenation is directly related to the diameter of the wires. That is why thicker speaker wire is use to run speaker signals longer distances, and thinner wires can be used for shorter distances. 50 foot cable could be done, but you probably don't want a garden hose sized cable!

I actually have mine where I have 2 seperate 10 foot sections and it's all modular with PS2 connectors. ETTL works just fine. All you are doing is extending the hotshoe even further that the original shoe cord.

Ok here's an update. Thanks to all. Done my hack. Unlike others posted I used good old DB9 connectors not as pretty as say MiniDIN but I can buy a 50ft straight DB9 wired through for 11 bucks, seems to work fine. At least as far as my simple tests just now showed. Hooked the cable in, turned it all on, changed zoom and focus watched them change on the 430ex, tripped shutter and flash went off with good exposure. Again thanks.