Simple Pen Photo Tutorial

A pencil of mine was recently awarded "Featured Photo" at the International Association of Penturners website (http://www.penturners.org). Since then I've been getting lots of, "How did you take that picture?" type questions.

I've significantly changed my way of shooting pens since the last time I talked about it, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to do a walkthrough of my process.

It's actually VERY simple, and requires minimal equipment.

First of all is the camera. Many moons ago I was into "serious" photography. I had tons of gear, 35mm and medium format and all the bits and bobs that go with those cameras. But when digital cameras were able to match (or exceed) the quality of 35mm film, I got out. I sold the bulk of my gear while I still could, and only had a few accessories left.

Considering that background, I have always had a hard time buying a digicam that did not have a PC socket. The PC socket is a generic flash socket and has been around for decades. It allows the most flexibility in strobes and flashes. I had hung on to some of my lighting gear (my main photography focus was nature, but I still had need for artificial light on occasion), and a PC socket was required to utilize that gear.

My current camera is a Kodak Z7590. It's a few years old, but was the best camera sporting a PC socket I could afford. It also has some pretty decent manual controls, including a realtime levels meter.

The built-in flash is surprisingly good, but of course is still fixed in place, and REALLY close to the lens. So its use is limited.

But I have a Vivitar flash that has more than enough power for my needs, and will attach to the PC socket on the camera. The camera has no way to control the flash other than "on", but the manual controls on the camera for aperture take care of that. The flash also has an "auto" mode, where it tries to guess the exposure based on a sensor in the flash body, but that is never used.

The flash by itself isn't much better than the built-in flash in the camera. What makes it perfect for me is the fact that I can bounce it off the ceiling or wall as needed. It doesn't need to be mounted to any brackets or the camera itself. In fact, it wouldn't be as good that way. (There is another way though if you have a higher-end flash with a pivoting head. If you're interested, leave me a comment.)

Depending on how lazy I am at the time, I may or may not mount the camera to a tripod. The flash allows hand holding with minimal loss of sharpness, so it's not critical. In one hand I hold the camera set to "M" (manual) and with the aperture set to 4.0 to start with. Shutter is 1/25 or so, just fast enough not to capture any ambient light. With the camera pointed at the subject, I point the flash at the ceiling and press the shutter.

That's it! No magic, no sacrifices of small animals, nada. From here it's just a matter of playing with the aperture until you get the image you want.

I find that having a white background for the subject is much easier than a colored background. The reason why is apparent when I move into the post processing.

For post processing, I use Adobe Photoshop. The most recent version I own is CS3 (thanks work!). Any version of Photoshop should be able to do what I'm going to show you, as well as most other image processing applications. But I've been using Photoshop since v3 so long ago passed the learning curve.

When shooting the image, try to fill your frame with the background. As you can see from the photo on the left, I got some extraneous stuff in the image. That's OK though because I was going for a detail shot of the clip. It will be cropped anyway.

I load the image in Photoshop, and define my final image crop. As I said, I was doing a detail shot of the clip, so that's what I cropped to.

Once I'm happy with the cropping, I open the Levels tool (Image - Adjust - Levels in Photoshop CS3). As you can see, the white levels are maxed out. They're "outside the gamut". That means there is no information other than "white" there. So I can move the light colored caret to the left to essentially remove that section.

Doing that may provide an apparent washed out look. So the gray and black carets must be moved to compensate. Tiny adjustments are usually all that is needed. The background stays true white, while the subject gets darkened as you adjust.

Once you're happy, resize the image (for web use I do no more than 600 pixels for the longest side), sharpen if desired, and save.

It sounds a lot harder than it really is. And with digital cameras, there's no film cost, no processing cost, no delay while you wait for your pictures. You get instant gratification, and can keep trying over and over until you get an image you like.

Drop me a note over at the IAC (username DurocShark), the Woodnet forums (same username), or leave a comment if you have any questions.

Pentel Mandrel Properly Mounted

Here's a photo of the mandrel being used correctly. I had it between centers in the previous article and using the drill stop instead of using a brass nut.

I'm unsure of the wood being used there, probably a rosewood of some kind. But here's the completed Pentel based pencil.

And finally, an action shot of the HF 2" Scroll Chuck I reviewed here. It runs absolutely true and was a great purchase.

I have some segmented blanks lined up for these pencils that I'll get to next weekend.

Turning a Pentel Pencil

One of the things I've wanted to do ever since I started turning pens was make a Pentel mechanical pencil. The kits out there for making pencils are crap. I've tried a bunch and they've all had serious problems. Some break the lead. Others use a twist mechanism that is too weak to handle a heavy body. And so on.

The reliable Pentel pencils I've had over the years have none of those problems. They just work. Repeatedly. For years.

Examining the barrel of a Pentel shows it's a pretty simple design. A plastic tube with a narrow bit at the tip. So why couldn't I make my own barrel?


The problem is the narrow opening at the tip. Every time I've tried to make that I've screwed it up. Misalignment, damage during turning, etc. Then I found a seller over on penturners.org who sold a kit. (NOTE: He's not ready to sell bulk yet. I'll put his info here when he is.)


The kit included a stepped drill bit. The need for the stepped bit is obvious when you look at the stock Pentel barrel. The narrow opening is only at the tip, to allow the nib to be screwed onto the mechanism and bind the barrel in between. That solves the drilling alignment problem.

The kit also included a mandrel with a step matching the drill bit. This solves the problem of damaging the blank during turning and allows it to be securely mounted and aligned.

I also got steel bushings for turning to match the hardware, matching delrin bushings for mounted finishing (CA in particular), a nut for the narrow side of the mandrel, and a brass stop bushing for the drill bit.


I selected a curly maple blank for my first attempt since I have a bunch. I drilled the blank with the step drill and trimmed the nib end until the nib mounted well. See the photo above for a test fitting. I was half tempted to leave it like that just to be odd!


After the test fitting was successful, I mounted everything on the mandrel and mounted that between centers on my lathe. It should be chuck mounted, but I was afraid to screw up the threads on my first use. (After talking to the seller, I found I was supposed to use the brass stop bushing on the drill bit, not the mandrel. I should have read his directions more closely... The info was in there!)


I turned it down to a comfortable shape, if a little heavy. I could have taken it much thinner, but was a bit nervous for my first time.


After sanding to 800 grit I removed it and did a test fit. Ahhh... Nice.


I applied several coats of rattle-can lacquer (I didn't realize the black bushings were delrin, so I didn't do a CA finish.) After letting it cure overnight I hit it with the buffer and assembled.

The pics that follow are how it looked after assembly. Placing the clip was a bit hairy. I was worried about scratching the finish. So I used a drill bit that was a bit larger than the wood barrel to slip the clip on from the top. That worked great!

I love how it looks, and that I can now use a mechanical pencil I'm proud to say I made, instead of some plastic (or stainless steel, in the case of my Parker pencil) thing.

I will be doing many more I think!

Leather Fishers Of Men Pen

After seeing a beautiful example of using leather for a pen blank over on IAP, I decided to give it a go.

It turned nice enough, and sanded well, at least as long as I kept the leather saturated with thin CA. I thought I'd give it a thin CA finish as well to at least preserve the illusion of the leather's texture.


I think it came out too thin and the ends of the leather blank are visible and lighter. I'll be refinishing it tonight to see if some medium CA will take care of things.