I have been trying to find a cheap way to remotely trigger my flash off camera. I immediately ruled out Pocket Wizards and the like because they are very expensive so I bought a Cactus wireless remote on ebay for less than 20 bucks and it worked "O.K." but had some problems with it failing to fire at times and it went through batteries pretty fast. So, I read some place, I think it was on "The Strobist", that you could take the cord that came with the Cactus and cut it in half, attach household plugs to the ends and extend the cord to any length you wanted, within reason. (There has to be a length at which the voltage drops are to great so as to prevent the flash from firing.) Being the adventurous type, I got in "Ole Bessy" (my truck) and headed off to the local, Ok it's twenty miles away, Home Depot where I bought 50 feet of some wire and a couple of polarized male and female plugs. I used the polarized plugs so I would not cross the wires when I plugged everything together. When I got home, I cut the wire that came with the Cactus in half -> it had a white wire and a ground wire inside. I connected a male plug to each end of the cut wires and then added the female plugs to the ends of the wire I had bought. I checked everything with a volt meter to make sure the wires were not crossed. I supposed if a person was really wanting to be safer, you should attach the female plugs to the cut wires from the Cactus to prevent someone from plugging them into a wall socket. I probably should change that. Plugged everything in and WOW, it work. Now I can place my flash up to fifty feet away and still fire it. The good thing about this that I did not know before making this modification is that I can fire the flash using the power from the camera and I don't need the battery in the Cactus. There is no TTL function with this setup so the flash has to be setup via the manual mode. But, for the price, it is an inexpensive solution for remotely firing your flash. I have ordered a hotshoe sync cord and plan on cutting it in half and adding some plugs, probably ethernet plugs, to the ends. If it works, I then would have TTL functionality as well. I think I remember reading that someone else did this also, probably on "The Strobist" as well.
