Gnurple dot Net

PROLOGUE

My foray into the off-camera flash world began with a PC sync cable plus a pair of hot shoe adapters for camera and flash.

It works, but having a cable hanging off my camera gets in the way and tangles in the camera strap. The coiled wire is a spring that, like a mischievous cat, knocks over my tripod stand.

I made a deal with the voices inside my head: sanity in exchange for a radio flash trigger. A hobby photographer on a limited budget such as myself can’t afford nice Pocket Wizards, so I ordered some Poverty Wizards instead.

I was hooked at once! I stuffed my PC cord into a camera bag pocket and haven’t looked back.

THE MOD
Since then I’ve come across the infamous Gadget Infinity Cactus Transmitter Antenna Mod (GICTAM), best described here. If you’re like me you can’t say no to an opportunity to play with a soldering iron.

I ordered the appropriate Digikey bits along with some stuff for work (sharing shipping saves cents) which arrived less than 24h later - a shipping miracle!

The Bits and Pieces

Step 0: Disassemble the transmitter and yoink the battery.

Step 1: Locate the appropriate place for the antenna. Too far away from the front and the bottom of the antenna mount will strike the PCB. Too far from the side and the hole butts up against the center screw mount that keeps the whole unit together. Too close to the edge and the case depth is too small, so the bottom of the mount will strike the bottom of the case before it’s fully closed.

Step 2: Drill a pilot hole, and then drill consecutively larger holes until the antenna mount barely doesn’t fit. I did it this way so that the threads on the mount would bite into the case a bit when installed. This is not for weatherproofing - moisture is happy to get in via the LED hole or test button - but so that I can control the angle of the antenna. I wanted it to stand as straight as possible when mounted on the camera. What can I say, I’m a stickler for details.

(It ends up standing straight when viewing the camera from left / right, but at a slight angle when viewing from front / back)

Step 3: Get some wire. I cut a handy piece of telephone wire and, yoinked one of the 4 conductors, cut it to 6.82″, which should be 1/4 wavelength of 433MHz. Then solder one end to the PCB by bending the tip of the wire and feeding it through the hole from under the board.

The Innards

Step 4: I wrapped the wire around a large hex key. I kept tightening it around consecutively smaller hex keys until it was coiled just tight enough to fit in the case.

Step 5: Solder the wire to the mount (already fitted to the case from Step 2). I did this with my trusty “helping hands”, a little stand whose ball-jointed arms end with alligator clips. Great for soldering, but I use it a lot more for photography. Perhaps I shall blog about that later.

(With the loose end of the wire in one alligator clip, I couldn’t find a spot for the other to grip the outer case. I ended up looping a bit of wire through the LED hole and gripping that.)

Finally, reassemble the whole thing. The case did close, but the bottom wire bent where it’s soldered to the mount, so you know it’s quite close to the bottom of the case.

The Result

EPILOGUE
As soon as I had it reassembled, I tested it. Frustration mounted when I clicked the trigger a few times and nothing happened, even with the receiver only a few inches away. Frustration mounted in the same way it does when you just finish cooking burgers on the BBQ with some nice, tasty BBQ sauce… and then you try to carry too much and drop a burger on the ground. The sort of frustration that builds up until a sort of safety valve within you pops and out comes a great “Aaugh!”^[1]

But then, aha, THEN I tried it with the antenna mounted. Success! I mounted a flash (at lowest power) on the trigger and tested it on the ground floor, as far away as I could get. Fired every time. I took it upstairs to mah Hunnybear and asked her to yell “FLASH!”, then triggered it from the ground floor. Worked every time, so I went into the basement and tried again. I could barely hear her yell, but it worked every time.

So, bad news that it doesn’t work in “stealth mode” with the antenna off, but hooray for extended range! Guess I’d better not lose^[2] that antenna….

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