Pliable base for inverting pin head for photos

[Chuck]

I'm thinking of embarking on a project that would require recto and verso photo of many specimens. That means inverting the specimen and securing it upright by the pin head.

I currently use white modeling clay for the few verso photos I take. This means kneading the clay until it warms and becomes pliable. And, the pin head doesn't always get "stuck" as I'd like and end up toying with the specimen to get it upright. This will not work to process hundreds of specimens in a timely manner.

I was thinking about white playdough, but it dries out quickly and is surprising expensive.

I've tried styrafoam, that doesn't work well.

Any ideas?

[adamcotton]

I use white plasticine to pin a specimen in my light box for both sides. The same blob has been in the light box for years, and I just squeeze it to remove the holes. It grips pins for ventral (not verso!) side photos really well.

Adam.

[58chevy]

I use plastazote. It works pretty well, but you have to use a bit of force to push the pinhead in. Be careful.

[boghaunter1]

Chuck,
For years I have used what was once called "sticky tac"... this is a commonly available (stationary/office supply stores) type of soft "putty" for mounting posters & papers to walls. It is now often blue (was orange yrs ago) & is easily removed from the substrate with no mess & remains pliable for years if kept in a small ziplok or vial... works great.
John K.

[Chuck]

Thanks guys. I believe the modeling clay I use is plasticine. It works, just takes too long to warm it up. plastazote, as in pinning bottoms? That doesn't work well with safety and speed. John I remember Sticky Tac and you know, that would work- except I've never seen white, and need white; I'll check the craft store. I did some quick searches and found "soft" pasticine but most if not all is air dry, which means it will dry out over the course of a short time.

[bobw]

I always use Blu Tack. Sometimes with heavy specimens, the pin can fall over, but it generally works pretty well.

[Cabintom]

Part of the reason I went with suspending specimens on a couple fishing lines (I've posted about my photographic set-up previously), was that I didn't find a satisfactory way to quickly/easily stick pin heads into a medium that would hold the specimen properly. If you have to push too hard, you risk damaging the specimen. If it's too soft, the medium doesn't effectively hold the pin and the specimen (particularly large ones) may slowly drop to one side or the other.
I also found I'd spend too much time trying to level the specimen so that the wings would be entirely in focus (macro can have a very narrow depth of field).

[Jshuey]

What Tom said!

I used to use sticky Tac but gave it up because I ended up with dorsal and ventral photos that were at different distances from the camera lens. This creates dorsal/ventral photos that are at slightly different scales (at least using my set up, where the camera doesn't move between exposures). If this is important to you, then I suggest creating a "photo tray" that has two nylon lines that you simply lay the specimen on.

Here is an example I pulled together from old photos, pasted together and then cleaned up - total time was about 10 minutes this morning. Plus the added beauty is that the nylon lines are at 1cm spacing - so every raw photo has a scale line. All I did was paste two photos together, and then use a magic wand tool to strip out the background. It's a little rough because I used a low resolution this morning - if I had used the original photos at 100% resolution, the wing fringes would have come out a lot better. (this is Atalopedes flaveola from Columbia)

John

[Chuck]

Thanks Tom & John.

I have experienced challenges ensuring the specimen is completely level; and there's nothing more frustrating than thinking I have a publication-grade photo and realizing that the wings are not to scale because the darned specimen was two degrees tilted. The two lines would indeed take care of that.

My concern is time- if every photo takes five minutes to polish, and every specimen needs two photos, then 500 specimens would take 5000 minutes- 82 hours. Yikes. I wonder if using a very small- say, 2lb or even 1lb, monofilament would not show up and I can use the photo as-is. What size do you guys use?

ps Tom, it's great to see you back here! I've been wondering what you're up to and miss your updates.

[bobw]

I use white plasticine to pin a specimen in my light box for both sides. The same blob has been in the light box for years, and I just squeeze it to remove the holes. It grips pins for ventral (not verso!) side photos really well.

Adam.

Good to see you championing the correct terms Adam - "dorsal" and "ventral". I hate those ridiculous "recto" and "verso" terms, which I believe were a D'Abrera invention, and are correctly used just for the pages of a book.

[bobw]

I do like the fishing line method that Tom came up with. I tried it once but found it tricky to balance the specimens on the lines, especially when dealing with specimens of very diffent sizes. I tried to make a permanent box with the lines in, but this proved way beyond my skill or patience set.

[Chuck]

I do like the fishing line method that Tom came up with. I tried it once but found it tricky to balance the specimens on the lines, especially when dealing with specimens of very diffent sizes. I tried to make a permanent box with the lines in, but this proved way beyond my skill or patience set.

Thanks for the insights Bob. My thought was to use unit pinning trays with three different width lines. I currently use pinning trays with white plastazote, which gives me a rough guide to get the specimen under the camera, and also a nice white background that doesn't reflect like white paper does.

It should be easy enough to run two parallel fishing lines over the pinning tray and secure the ends with staples or some sort of tape.

My quandary is how small can I go with the fishing line, and whether it shows up in photos. I could try it, after I secure some thin monofilament. I suppose (fear) that no matter what the line will show up, so I'd have to manipulate every photo.

[bobw]

I used very thin fishing line as I didn't want it to show up in the photos. The biggest problem I had was getting the line taut, then getting it to stay taut.

[Jshuey]

Here is a different approach that we used for the Butterflies and Skippers of Ohio. We stretched clear acetate over a metal picture frame and then photographed a bunch of bugs at once. This works because when you flip a bug over, there is less pin above versus below. So sticky tac on the surface of the acetate for ventral shots, while you pin though the acetate for dorsal bugs - so you can control height. Also note that there was no cleaning up the background with this technique - as we clamped the frame a few feet above an illuminated background. This was probably faster than dealing with individual photos, but it was not easy. And if you want dorsal and ventral of the same specimens - then you have to re-pin the entire plate.

The entire book is here - https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... rs_of_Ohio

John