Hacking High Speed Sync

A photographer sees the world differently and unfortunately cameras see the world differently than the human eye. Many a time this causes problems for me but in a fun challenging rip-my-hair out kinda way. I noticed these pretty translucent daffodil petals as they were back lit from the sun. That's my background!!! And ooh, now I also got a pretty hair/rim light from that glorious orb in the sky. But shooting into the sun = doesn't work. I also wanted a shallow DOF so extra doesn't work. I wanted to shoot at f/1.6 or in that neighborhood with my 85mm. My Pentax setup, sync speed 180.. hmmn??? If I had an assistant maybe a reflector would work, and yes I have a holder but it doesn't like the wind, but then I wouldn't be able to try this nifty setup :)
This is where shooting with two different camera manufacturers gets tricky. For my Pentax, which I have the 85mm f/1.4 for, I have one flash that must be connected to the hotshoe to use FP mode, high speed sync, and shoot faster than 1/180 to not have everything blown out. But who wants to shoot with on camera flash??? yuck! And then you are also limited to small modifiers. So I tried this little hack your TTL cord trick where you splice your cable and use an ethernet cable to make it longer and PRAY you didn't mess up the wiring and fry your equipment. Ps this mod also allows you to black out your background when shooting indoors :) More detailed explanation found here.

So now I can use a 24" softbox, beauty dish, (my preferences for shooting outdoors due to less wind resistance) etc and get off camera lighting and shoot up to 1/8000 sec

hit this VIDEO to see the POV style shoot of the shoot using a GoPro mounted to my forehead

Oh and if you don't understand or know why all of this needs to be done This will explain how camera shutters and flash sync works and why you need to cheat it if you are a masochist like me :)