I Step Up My Pen Photography

[Usernameistaken]

 

One thing I want to do better is get the brightly lit pen with the ultra-black background

 

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Hi Waski_the_Squirrel,

 

To get an exposed subject on a completely black background, the easiest method is to use a flash. If you are not familiar or don't have one available, it can be done with ambient light as well.

 

First, a note on propping. If you lie your pen on a black surface and follow my instructions, which will hopefully be clear enough, your photo will feature the pen and shadow on a darkish surface that fades off into black in the background. If you suspend your pen in any number of ways, but let's say for this case with a small DIY boom arm and very fine fishing line, and follow my instructions, your pen will appear as if it is floating in a black void.

 

Get yourself a fairly large piece of paper. I can tell you how to do with any color paper including white, and but for our purposes, get the darkest paper you can find. This will be your background, and or, your surface and your background. If you are lying the pen on a surface, then use this paper to make a "sweep," or a surface that curves up into the background. You can some tape to fix the lower to a table and make sort of a football goal post (two uprights and a cross bar) out of metal plastic cardboard, etc that is just a bit wider than the paper. Fix the upright edge to the crossbar, high enough to it's out of frame.

 

You can also place your table against a wall and simply tape the top edge of your paper to the wall and gently sweep it down to the opposite edge on the table, but I like being able to move things around more easily once set up.

 

The further back your background starts to curve up from the lit object in the foreground, the darker it will be in your exposure.

 

If you'd rather suspend your pen for a black void type image, then just suspend the paper a distance behind it, so that it fills the frame and no light is spilling on it.

 

With a flash: Simply light the pen with your flash and place your background far enough back so that your light doesn't spill onto it.

 

In ambient light: Place your pen in the naturally optimized light and create shadows on your background to darken it. You can build a shadow box up the sides and over the top, just outside your viewfinder edges, you can use nearly anything to block light. As long as your background is about 7-10 times darker than your foreground, you shouldn't see it. (This is why having it as far back a possible is helpful. If you can control your ISO, use the lowest possible. And, always stabilize your camera with a tripod or other support.

 

With constant lights (desk lamps, floods, flashlights/torches): applying a bit of both the flash and the ambient techniques will serve you well.

 

If the background's not dark enough, that means light is spilling onto it, so simply block that light (create a shadow, adjust your light source, etc.)

 

Note, if you want a white or gray background, just do the opposite, instead of eliminating the light from the background, hit it with light. In this case the light spilling that you'll need to control will be from the background onto your subject, possibly blowing our your edges (to white), in which case too much light is hitting the background and it either needs to be toned down or moved further back. In perfect conditions, you can often use a smaller piece of paper for a white background effect (called High Key) than the black background (called dark field), because it doesn't always need to be further back from the light source.

 

A simplified rule of thumb is to have your background at least as far from your subject as the subject is from your camera.

 

Also, for what it's worth, your sport lens might be able to do more for your pens than you realize. May I assume we're talking about something sort of like a 70-200 f/2.8?

 

Hope this helps. (It's late, so I hope it's at least coherent)

 

I just started a thread tonight to address these type of questions, so if you want to check it out:

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/312841-offering-photography-advice/

 

James