Which length flash cord?

[Feanor]

I think I could do with a remote flash cord, but Canon's is rather short and over-priced.


In your learn<span class="Unicode"]&eacute;d opinions, which would be the most useful without being unmanageably long for packing and transport - the 10ft/3m cord or the much longer 33ft/10m one? Or perhaps the 5ft/1.5m lead? (I suspect this might be slightly limiting at times)

[Freeday]

I use a 5ft cord and have not had a problem with length while in the studio, a 10ft might be more appropraite if you take your studio lighting to weddings.

[Sean Setters]

Up front, I'm a big fan of the flashzebra site and I try to support them whenever I can. They have a good selection of TTL cables that are reasonably priced. However, just the other day David Hobby did a write-up on his blog about some coiled 10m TTL cords available on ebay. As the cords are coiled, yet can be stretched a great deal, they may offer the best combination of versatility and useability.

[Feanor]

To be honest at this stage I'm not looking to use it for studio lighting as I have none, just for being able to move my 580EXII around and handhold it for more control, probably with my Lumiquest Pro Max attached. But I only ever like to buy something once so if I ever do start using other lighting equipment then I'd want this cord to be useful for that too.


I saw the link to the 10m cords on strobist myself, I linked to the same ebay seller above, but I've not been able to find out their coiled length. The trouble is that I'm not sure I particularly want a great long telephone handset-type cord in my bag getting tangled with itself and everything else all the time.

[Wes]

Feanor if your worried about it tangling in the camera bag store it in a quart sandwich bag before putting it in the camera bag.

[Feanor]

So I take it then the conclusion is that longest is best?

[Oren]

Why not a CTR-301P?

[Feanor]

Why not a CTR-301P?
<div style="clear: both;"]</div>

Interesting thought, to be honest I didn't know such cheap wireless transmitters existed so thanks for the tip. But it doesn't support TTL so to keep the costs down I think I need to stick with wired remotes.

[Oren]

http://strobist.blogspot.com/2009/11/new-chinese-ttl-remotes-surfacing-for.html


http://strobist.blogspot.com/2009/12/first-look-pixel-tr-331-ttl-remote.html


I dunno how much they cost and the Canon ones aren't available yet, but just thought I'd let you know they exist.

[Rodger]

In my opinion, get the longest (reasonable) cord, and leave the excess length wrapped and tied with a bread bag tie or something of that nature. The coiled ones look nice too. I'm in the market for a TTL cord also haha


-Rodger