I recently got a digital camera and was playing around with it. I love the modern design of my Lamy Al-Star:

That's Noodler's Luxury blue peeking out of the window.

I'm using this shot as my current (and very first) avatar:


Al-Star uses a snap cap, not a screw in cap, so you can rotate the faceted sides out of the image and get a very stark retro-modernistic UFO type image of it. I get the feeling this is the kind of pen the robot Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still might have used:


Gort! Klaatu barada nikto!

Doug

P.S. By the way, the scribbles in the background were actually written with a Parker 75 loaded with Private Reserve American Blue. Just trying to keep myself honest here.

Nice pics! Is that a new MacBookPro in the top pic? Your pic reminds me of this one that I took a while back of a Sheaffer sitting atop my Powerbook.

Also, isn't the clip usually black on the silver Al-stars? I would have sworn that the one that I used to have had a black clip...

TMann

It's the "old" G4. Great machine, but I'll probably be replacing it with the Intel version sometime early next year.



The "Silver" Al-Stars have black clips. Mine is a slightly deeper color called "Graphite" I think, but I could be wrong.

Hey, nice Sheaffer. I haven't gotten into Sheaffers yet, but a Snorkel in excellent shape and in perfect writing order would really make my day.

Doug

Excellent shots, Doug! Bravo (and you too, TMann )
What type of setup did you use for the photos of the Lamy?

Thanks Maja.

My apartment is my light box. It has white walls, ceiling, and carpets, and one entire side opens to the south. The first shot is handheld. For the other shots, I braced the camera on a tripod, but had to hand hold. The light caused too much of a shadow, so I put a white sheet of paper behind to act as a fill in. It causes too severe a light set up, but in the case of the Lamy, it worked okay.

Camera was a Canon PowerShot A540 which allows much manual programming but comes with the world's worst manual. Hopefully, I'll be learning more as I go along.

Doug

Thanks for the reply, Doug; it gives me hope re: my attempts to photograph some of my own pens!

That's actually respectable product photography. I've had to do some myself at work, paid to have some other done, and yours is pretty good inevery respect. Congratulations, and keep it up. The link is to a photo website and photo I did for an advertising postcard. The subject is my hand, some life size cattle antibiotic tablets, and a bunch of Photoshop.

http://www.photosig.com/go/photos/view?id=1649653

Yes, the Graphite (model 26) and Silver-Blue (27) have silver clips. The other colours have black clips. Pics here:
http://www.thewritingdesk.co.uk/lamy/lamy.php#alstar

HTH,

Martin

PS: nice pics, BTW