Pelikan 100 & Pen Photography

My apologies for the late update. Life and photography have taken over lately. I had switched into the user mode by enjoying the pens as a token of gratitude to Providence.

Here we have a mint Pelikan 100 and the goal is to take a nice natural light shot. Here is the subject:

Let’s uncap it and get the first shot.

1/125 f5.6 200 flash off, ambient only

It is a bit dark isn’t it? Let’s turn on the flash.

1/125 f5.6 200 flash on – TTL bounced off the ceiling

A bit better but it has become forensic photography with that harsh light, even with a diffuser and bounced. What to do? First, let in more ambient by slowing down the shutter speed, then bumping down the flash to compensate a stop or two. By doing that, it will correct the under exposure and fix the harshness. Like so:

1/15 f5.6 200 flash -1.3

Much better?

—TR

BFTP: WW2 Era PILOT “R”

Banzai! Let us continue the war theme from a different Axis power: Japan. The “R”s were produced by PILOT during the World War II and well into the postwar fifties. These wartime pens have the typical steel or shiro nibs because of the gold prohibition. The ink delivery system is the eye-dropper with a shut of valve. The barrel and cap are made of celluloid, ebonite section and feed, and the cap ring and clip are nickel plated. These pens are very modest yet exudes craftsmanship.

A 1940s PILOT ad. featuring the Japanese Imperial NAVY.

My PILOT R and an eye dropper kit with a PILOT 375ml black ink bottle. Despite its size, the pen rivals even the biggest piston fillers in terms of ink capacity, thanks to the eye-dropper system. Unfortunately, it also has all the ED cons: burping when low on ink, must shut valve on and off for anything longer than a sentence, etc. Nothing is perfect, but I could live with it for several fills without any problem.

The Nippon Imperial ARMY ad.

The Kamikaze pilot’s pen of choice. No wonder these are scarce! 🙂

As found, my pen had a rusted out “warranted” nib, but it wasn’t the correct one anyway. So I replaced it with another shiro nib from my stash. Unfortunately, the replacement has an oval breather hole, not the crescent, from the fifties. I do have a crescent shiro nib on another PILOT, but that’s for another blog post. Cheers! —TR