Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Nib Creep and a New Lens

After over a month of waiting, I finally received my new camera lens.  It is a Sigma 105mm 1:28 macro lens.  I was anxious to play with it, of course, so I pulled out a few fountain pens and gave the lens a spin.

Here's a photo of my Parker IM fountain pen, inked up with Diamine Red Dragon.  The crystals/junk on the nib and feed are what is called nib creep.  Not sure why it happens, but it was neat to get such a close up picture of it.  



By contrast, here is my Cross Solo, inked up with Noodler's Black Swan in Australian Roses.  You can see that the nib has a slight amount of ink on it and the feed is clean. (Well, if you don't count the cat/dog hair that is dangling from it!)  That's how a fountain pen should look.



These four pictures were taken outside (natural light) and using a tripod.  I tend to be very over-confident of my ability to hold a camera still.  I really hate to stop what I am doing and drag out my tripod, so I'll hand-hold for shots way more often than I should.  That's a lot of blurry, messed-up shots.  Good thing film isn't involved anymore, or I would be wasting A LOT of film!  One of the first lessons I learned with this new lens is that hand-holding just will not work.  Get out the dang tripod as soon as you get out the lens, Lois!

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