Getting Pens To Stay Put

[alexwi]

Hi y'all,

 

One of the challenges I have when photographing pens is to get them to stay put. Especially because I don't like props to be visible on the pictures.

 

Right now I use tiny strips of card stock strategically placed under the pens. It's way better than trying to balance a pen and hold my breath while shooting, but a bit of a hassle to adjust.

 

If anyone has other ideas, I'm all ears.

 

Thanks!

 

Alex

[Karmachanic]

Blu Tack was invented especially for this purpose in 1969.

[mana]

Blu Tack was invented especially for this purpose in 1969.

Indeed! There was a great hubbub about it back in the day. You see, the use of fountain pens was waaaaay more prevalent and thus, they were indeed photographed more often. I think it was the iconic Parker 51 with it's wonderful and perfectly round barrel that was the impetus for developing Blu Tack, took a while though to perfect the formula to something that was nontoxic and reusable...

 

Before that photographers used all kinds of horrible methods to fix the pens in place, including already chewed bubblegum! While highly unhygienic that worked all fine on surfaces that were not porous but oh dear god, if you stuck that to a paper, cloth or canvas used as the backing for the scene... the horror of it all! Still gives me nightmares, that...

[alexwi]

Thank you both for the idea!

 

alex

[JulieParadise]

Washi tape. Just take a small piece, fold/mangle it to a roll/ball/flattish square with the sticky side on the outside. The piece just has to be small enough to be invisible from where you photograph.

[tamiya]

BluTac leaves a greasy trail.

 

I prefer the rubbery mastic the banks use to paste my new creditcard onto the cover letter, also SIM cards to their cardboard retail package. Previously when you got a freebie CD-ROM or extra booklet to a magazine they'd use that tacky mastic too... but it's been a while since I've bought a magazine

[Southerngent]

Love Tamiya's idea! A small bit of that rubbery stuff that hold credit cards onto the paper they came on would be perfect. Can't wait for another credit card--as if I need one!

[inkstainedruth]

I just hold pens in one hand for close-up details, or set up the pen so that the clip is stabilizing the pen (if capped or posted) or leaning against the stabilized cap.

I tend to wait for good weather and do it outside on my front porch, on lap desk with a white napkin on it to use as a good background. But then, I don't have good equipment or a good set up (if I could figure out what was wrong with the digital SLR, I'd go back to using it -- rather than my cellphone -- because I have a nice set of closeup filters for it).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[alexwi]

Thanks for all the suggestions!

 

Alex

[Charles Rice]

I wouldn't worry so much about how to keep the pen still, you can use anything you want. The trick is to use decent software to get rid of un-wanted images.

 

This small sample took about five minutes. If I took another five minutes, it could look a whole lot better.

[alexwi]

Part of my quest to do something to fix a Sonnet's air leaking cap took me down the road to Milliput epoxy.

 

Before doing an actual repair, I needed to experiment a bit with it and figured that I might as well do something useful with it to determine curing time, hardness, etc., so I made a few thingamajigs to hold pens in place for photography.

 

I figured I'd share the idea, as I'm not the only one with this issue.

 

alex