One of my latest acquisitions is the affordable El Skyport transmitter/receiver system from Elinchrom, a manufacturer out of Switzerland. As far as quality goes, it gives the much-renown competitor, PocketWizard, a run for its money. But that said, Canon flash users may run into some problems from the get-go with the El Skyport system because of your connectivity options.
Pictured to the right is two of my flashes, a Canon 430EX and my Canon 580EX II. As far as connectivity is concerned, you have few options. With the 430EX you can only connect to it through a hot shoe connection. However, the new 580EX II allows you to connect via PC and hot shoe mount, whereas the old 580EX did not give you a PC port.
That said, Canon flash users shouldn’t get to excited about using the El Skyport system right out of the box. The cables that come with the system don’t give you much for options: some huge connector (that I assume goes to bigger light setups, some 3.5mm plugs, and a few 1/4″ adapters for God-knows-what. The sync port out of the receiver is a 3.5mm jack, which isn’t all that common as far as flash lighting cables are concerned.
A little Google searching or a quick browse through B&H will tell you that the most popular connection adapters for strobe flashes is usually PC sync cables or miniphone jacks, which are smaller than the standard 3.5mm headphone jacks. In fact, I do have a couple male PC sync to female hot shoe mount cables in my gear bag (they cost me about $10 a piece), but what I REALLY needed was a 3.5mm plug on that end or a FEMALE pc sync cord.
It left me wondering, how on earth am I going to get these things to talk to my flashes now? I need to go from a 3.5mm jack to the hot shoe mounts on my flashes. I searched through B&H, called up our two local camera shops, and finally someone told me to look up Paramount Cords out of California and have them make a custom cord. Not for $50 a piece, thank you very much. All I wanted was something simple, as pictured to the right. A simple female hot shoe mount that leads to a male 3.5mm end. Something that should cost no more than $10–15 tops. Even that sounds a bit pricey to me.
So I had a few things going for me: 1.) I’ve got tons of mono 3.5mm jacks lying around from yesteryear, with all the audio hacks I’ve had to perform over the years and patching together a variety of gear. 2.) I’ve got two of those female hot shoe mounts (with triggering cable attached) also lying around not being used to their intended purpose, save to mount my strobes to a light stand. And I suppose 3.) I really enjoy some basic electrical hacking, the safe kind where I know I’m not going to fry myself or cause some major damage resulting in a plume of white smoke (right Jamison?). 
So here’s a BRIEF and easy-to-follow process to make your own female hot shoe mount to 3.5mm male plug. It’s so easy, that if you know how to splice wires and tape things together, even YOU can do it, too.
When you splice the cables, give yourself a few inches of room to work with. You can always cut back but adding on gets tricky. So when in doubt, start longer. You can always trim it down if you must.
As you can see, both cables for the hot shoe mount and a standard MONO 3.5mm headphone cable has a ground wire (the copper) and a hot wire, which will be wrapped in an inner sheath of rubber cabling. Be very careful when you’re splicing the wires and pulling the inner sheath away — you don’t want to break the wiring and have to splice further back. But that’s wiring 101 and I’m not here to teach you that.
Once you’ve got the ends exposed and the wires isolated from each other, coil up the matching ends: the exposed copper wiring to the other exposed copper wiring, and the sheathed wire to the other sheathed wire. When you’ve coiled them nice and tightly, simply tape it up with some electrical tape and you’ll be good to go. Make sure you tape it well so that it doesn’t come undone on you in the middle of a shoot down the road. That wouldn’t be good.
And provided that you didn’t cross the wrong wires or accidentally have the wrong wires come in contact with each other, you’ll have a working signal from your male 3.5mm plug to your female hot shoe mount to your flash. And as pictured here, a happy 430EX receiving orders from my camera via the El Skyport system.
By going this route, I saved myself about $80 by making them myself. The hot shoe mount to pc sync cable costs about $10 and the 3.5mm mono jack and cable I had lying around. A short amount of labor and a tiny bit of cash will get you what you need to get the job done. Ordering through someone that makes custom cables will run you up an unnecessary bill. Save $80 and do it yourself.
But seriously though, you’d think that Elinchrom would have created a hot shoe mount as well. It’s only one of the more universal ways of triggering strobe flashes. Seriously!
Anyway, good luck out there and I hope that this tip helps give other ‘togs out there a little courage to try something a little different. I do highly recommend the El Skyport system. It’s affordable, reliable, and works well! Granted, you do have to shoot fully manual with your flashes (no TTL), but that’s alright. I can live with that. As my buddy Jamison says, “well use your friggin light meter already.” I might as well now that I have an excuse and a need to now. 
UPDATE
If you’re not up to doing any hacking yourself, you could order one of these bad boys for $20 plus shipping and handling from FlashZebra.com. But they’re $20 and it’ll set you back with shipping, too. You can get the hot shoe mount for $10 and the mono 3.5mm cable you should be able to find lying around your junk drawer or for cheap at Radio Shack.
