Improvised cable release for Canon EOS
cameras with 2.5 mm socket

Andrew Davidhazy
Applied Photography for Science, Technolgy and Education
andpph.com


Some Canon digital cameras (such as my original Canon Digital Rebel) have incorporated a connecting socket for using a Canon “electronic” cable release. These are available from many sources and the cost seems to vary widely. In the spirit of improvisation I decided to make myself a home-made version of these electronic cable releases. I used some flexible and thin copper-clad board material (used to make printed circuits with) to fashion myself three flexible “fingers” and each of these had soldered to it at one end a wire leading to one of three connections of a sub-mini stereo phone plug.

The fingers were laid up as shown in the illustration. Note that the copper side of the figers is laid out so that the topp and middle one face the copper side of the bottom one. I placed a thin wood piece as a separator. I used JB Weld resin/catalyst type adhesive to glue one end of the fingers together using the adhesive also as an insulator. 

The two long pieces were connected to the body of the plug with one of them going to the very tip of the plug while the second one went to the body of the plug. The middle one was made a bit shorter and bent slightly so that when the long pieces were pressed together contact between the middle one and the one leading to the body of the phone plug would connect first and only after further pressure would the two longer fingers touch.

I used a three color cable to make it easy to remember what finger got connected to where in the sub-mini plug’s contact.




note that this is only a suggestion and I can not be responsible for how your attempt might or might not work.
FYI my “electronic” cable release works well. Andrew Davidhazy andpph@davidhazy.org