Eos 50E with EX380 Speedlight. How long off cord can be ?

I work with Eos 50E and Speedlight 380 and would like to mount the

flash on the tripod connecting to the camera with off cord (Canon

dose one with approx. 1 meter lenght). Original lead with hot shoe is

too short for my needs and would like to extend it However Jessops

who sells the cord will charge me an extra 100 pounds for a few meter

extension. Is there anyone who knows how safe is it to cut the cord

in the middle and fit an extra few meter extension? How many wires

cable do I need ? What resistance am I looking at ? How long can that

be ? Thanks for all your input.

PK

<p>For obvious reasons, Canon doesn't document the specs for the flash connection or their cables, so I doubt you'll find an official answer on what impedance the cable should be, and of course Canon's official answer on whether it's safe to cut the cord and try to splice it yourself would be that they suggest you not try it.</p>

<p>There are six conductors - the five you see on the base of the hotshoe, plus the frame of the shoe (ground). I don't know how things are wired inside the cable - if there are individual pairs for each conductor plus ground, for example. If you do cut it open, it wouldn't be difficult to find out which conductors connect to which pins on the shoe - just check for continuity.</p>

<p>See also <a href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0051q6&unified_p=1">http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0051q6&unified_p=1</a></p>

Canon has a modular TTL cable set that can get you up to 30 meters. You can also use it to hook up to four Speedlites together. It's not cheap and it disables several functions like E-TTL pre-flash, auto flash head zooming, etc. This is Canon's recommended method.

Other people have successfully extended their Off Camera Shoe Cord 2. If it gets too long, you could end up with metering errors due to excessive impeadence.

You can also hook two Off Camera Shoe Cord 2's together for about 2 meters length.