Plamp

What is a plamp? Well, a plamp is a flexible wire with clamps attached to both ends. Like this.


This one was given to me by Sunny from the Butterfly Circle forum :). If you want to check out great butterfly images or to know more about these beautiful insects, click here.

It is an extremely useful contraption that will come in handy in close-up and macro photography. Clip or tie one end to your tripod and the other to the stem of the flower you want to shoot. This will not only hold the flower/subject in place but will also greatly reduce the subject movement due to breeze. You get the idea? I am sure you can think of many other ways to put this cool gadget to use.



Thanks to the plamp, photographing this black and yellow cicada was a breeze even when it was quite windy!


The captured image:


You can buy a ready made plamp on-line, or you can DIY one. What you see above is about 2 feet long (the 6 mm diameter blue coated wire), with 2 inch clamps at both ends.



You will have to strip off about 2 cm of the polyethylene coating/insulation on both ends of the wire before you can hot glue the bare ends to the clamps. You can use cable tie too if you want to, or a combination of both. Finish it off by heat-shrink wrapping the joint areas and voila, you have got yourself a professional looking DIY Plamp.