I recommend you try gaffer tape instead of duct tape.
Advantages:
Remains flexible and removable forever.
Looks nicer, a cool matte black or manynother colors.
Where I get off making this recommendation:
I needed a light-excluding bellows for a photographic project. I made one using black illustration stock and gaffer tape. It worked extremely well on the first version and held up to hundreds of cycles of extension/compression. My application was sensitive to pinhole light leakage and there was none.
It would have lasted longer but that was the end of that project.
Fair comment. I used gaffer tape a lot at the beginning of my journey because it was convenient and available, but everything I built fell apart eventually, so I started using cloth duct tape. I recently discovered aluminium duct tape which is genuinely amazing. It’s like regular cloth duct tape, but it can be shaped really precisely, and it holds it’s shape even if everything else falls apart around it.
Also a fair point. My devices did not need to last indefinitely and I found the gaffer tape to be very forgiving when prototyping, allowing removal and replacement as I worked out the kinks.
Duct tape and cardboard solutions to questions like “How do I get these two pieces of photography equipment to work together?”
I recommend you try gaffer tape instead of duct tape.
Advantages:
Where I get off making this recommendation:
I needed a light-excluding bellows for a photographic project. I made one using black illustration stock and gaffer tape. It worked extremely well on the first version and held up to hundreds of cycles of extension/compression. My application was sensitive to pinhole light leakage and there was none.
It would have lasted longer but that was the end of that project.
My two cents. I love DIY stuff!
Fair comment. I used gaffer tape a lot at the beginning of my journey because it was convenient and available, but everything I built fell apart eventually, so I started using cloth duct tape. I recently discovered aluminium duct tape which is genuinely amazing. It’s like regular cloth duct tape, but it can be shaped really precisely, and it holds it’s shape even if everything else falls apart around it.
Also a fair point. My devices did not need to last indefinitely and I found the gaffer tape to be very forgiving when prototyping, allowing removal and replacement as I worked out the kinks.