I mentioned in the previous review that I found a solution using the Phottix Plato N8 remote for startrails. I finally had the chance when I traveled two hours north into New York from New York City. The photo you see above is the result of what the batteries in the remote would hold out too. I got off about 115 images at 30second intervals. Compiled them using startrails (for free) and wallah. It was not as long as I wanted, but based on a rough estimate fresh batteries would have gone much longer. I originally tested the remote with this process to see if it could get past the Nikon ~100 image limit in one release previously. I fired off at least 200+ images testing Nikon’s single release factor plus all the testing photos with it. I’d estimate it to be able to shoot at least 300+ images which wouldn’t be too shabby. Next time I will test over a longer period of time.

Okay, so as for what I was talking about with gaps. Here is a photo that I took in Baja California Mexico using the MC-36 interval timer wired remote which has a minimum of 1 second gaps. Zoomed out you can’t tell what I mean by the gaps it causes. Keep in mind the larger gaps are a few images I had to pull from the sequence due to a random unrepeatable digital camera anomaly (drives me nuts I can’t repeat it to get it repaired, but happy it doesn’t seem to occur often.)

This is a 100% crop. What I mean by this is I zoomed in at 100% and then cropped out what I saw. See all those tiny little dash lines? I feel if you blow up a nice star trail this could be an issue (click image for full size.)

Here is the photo taken from the New York scene at the beginning of this post. The lines are much more crisp and solid. Something I personally prefer. The sky isn’t as dark as a lonely Baja California isle, but it sure is enough to make a point. This is also  a 100% crop (click image for full size.)

This is just one more plus about the remote. Battery life will have to be something I will need to officially time, but I’ll be honest. I don’t want to stay up to 3-4 in the morning waiting for batteries to die :-p. I will probably just use the timer on my photos and check it beginning to end of the last frame taken. Leaving me with a margin of error of thirty seconds to a minute.

One other thing I wanted to address about the remote was based on a comment I received on my review of the unit. Due to the unit having the convenience of sliding into the hot shoe it will also block the pop up flash from fully rising. I wanted to note that you could let the transmitter hang over the lens barrel, just plain hang down, hold it to your tripod using a rubber band or even double stick velco tape. I wouldn’t let it dangle too unsupported as it may stress the headphone port. Not sure how well reinforced it is and it could deteriorate over time.

UPDATE: Check out Flipping Typical for a non software based font solution. Link was provided from Thomas Goodwin. Thanks!

Last but not least I found a neat program I wanted to share. it is for those of us who want to find fonts for projects or in any other scenario. It is freeware and is designed to show you exactly all the fonts that are on your computer.  The program is called Free&Easy Font Viewer 2.0. You can get it at www.download.com and give it a try. It has helped me in a bind when working on a few projects of my own. There is an advanced version, but the freeware version does all that I need.