Baystate Blue vs. Diamine Sapphire Blue

[JDlugosz]

It was remarked that Diamine Sapphire Blue is "similar to Baystate, but well behaved." So I put that on my list of things to scan and compare. I received a sample of D. Sapphire from FPN member luckygrandson, so I tried them using the same pen.

 

http://www.dlugosz.com/Hosted/InkScans/Noodler's/Baystate%20Blue/compare-excerpt.jpg

Here is the full image. And here is where you can find a browser plug-in for JPEG-2000.

 

The Sapphire is "dryer", producing a finer line. But the color differences are much more striking on the page than you can see on the scan. I'll do some more perceptual images later and add to this thread. But I found my first ink that is beyond the gamut of Adobe RGB: the darkest spots (where strokes crossed) on the scan cannot be represented by Adobe RGB. So Baystate Blue is unique in its dye formulation, compared to other things you are used to seeing, which largely includes "process color" printing and display images.

 

More in a follow-up below.

 

--John

Edited June 9, 2008 by JDlugosz

[Deirdre]

There's a brightness to Baystate Blue I've never seen captured in a scan (no matter how good the scan).

[Judybug]

There's a brightness to Baystate Blue I've never seen captured in a scan (no matter how good the scan).

 

I recently received a letter from a pen pal, part of which was written with Bay State Blue. It's a beautiful electric - almost flourescent - blue! I don't think any scan could do it justice.

 

Judybug

[CharlieB]

Baystate is clearly brighter than Sapphire, but the two colors are very similar. That leads to the question: Is Sapphire sufficiently better behaved than Baystate to warrant using the less vivid color? In my work we call this a cost/benefit analysis. Here the tradeoff is between behavior and beauty.

 

A related question would be: Is Sapphire, in fact, well behaved? I have heard one or two complaints about Diamine Sapphire (and Diamine Blue Black) here on FPN. I can't find the threads where the complaints were made, so I won't rely on my faulty memory here.

[simonrob]

Baystate is clearly brighter than Sapphire, but the two colors are very similar. That leads to the question: Is Sapphire sufficiently better behaved than Baystate to warrant using the less vivid color? In my work we call this a cost/benefit analysis. Here the tradeoff is between behavior and beauty.

 

A related question would be: Is Sapphire, in fact, well behaved? I have heard one or two complaints about Diamine Sapphire (and Diamine Blue Black) here on FPN. I can't find the threads where the complaints were made, so I won't rely on my faulty memory here.

 

The shade may be somewhat similar, but like most unsaturated mid-blues the Diamine looks rather insipid/watery to me; and if you look at the scan above you can see that, while it's nowhere near as bad as Baystate, if feathers somewhat too (as do some other Diamine inks). The closest match I've seen for the colour, brightness and intensity of Baystate Blue is a blue Sharpie; not a substitute for a fountain pen, of course, but the line it leaves looks much the same but without the feathering. As for a substitute ink, I would rather forgo the brightness and precise shade of Baystate but keep the intensity and relative lack of purple content; and this can be achieved via Noodler's Blue and various PR blues (all diluted a bit with water).

 

Simon

[wacomme]

It would be interesting to see a similar comparison of Baystate Blue and Binder Burple (1:1 mix of Waterman Florida Blue and Havana Brown).

 

Michael

 

[rogerb]

It would be interesting to see a similar comparison of Baystate Blue and Binder Burple (1:1 mix of Waterman Florida Blue and Havana Brown).

 

Michael

 

Did you mean 'BLURPLE', Michael?

If you do, then , to quote Richard:

 

"If you like the color of Tanzanite but don’t like the way the ink behaves, try mixing Waterman Florida Blue and Waterman Violet in equal parts. This mixture, which I have dubbed “Blurple,†is virtually indistinguishable from Tanzanite."

 

I have never read of his mentioning Burple as being a Blue-Brown mix.

 

I don't find Sapphire nearly as 'dramatic' as BSB....quite a nice blue which is much better-behaved, but it just doesn't have that 'zing'

 

Here is a very quick scribble with both, which appear to reproduce very accurately on my monitor:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v693/rogerb40uk/img033.jpg

Edited June 8, 2008 by rogerb

[Martius]

I'd like to give the Sapphire a shot - BSB is nice and I enjoy using it, but it sort of unnerves me that it looks virtually indistinguishable from Sharpie blue. I like some shading in my FP inks!

 

Best,

Summer

[wacomme]

It would be interesting to see a similar comparison of Baystate Blue and Binder Burple (1:1 mix of Waterman Florida Blue and Havana Brown).

 

Michael

 

Did you mean 'BLURPLE', Michael?

If you do, then , to quote Richard:

 

"If you like the color of Tanzanite but don’t like the way the ink behaves, try mixing Waterman Florida Blue and Waterman Violet in equal parts. This mixture, which I have dubbed “Blurple,†is virtually indistinguishable from Tanzanite."

 

I have never read of his mentioning Burple as being a Blue-Brown mix.

 

 

Yes. Yes. Yes. You are so right.

 

Michael

[CharlieB]

I happen to like Sharpie blue. I wish I could find a pack of the blue Sharpies with fine tips, but my local Sharpie sources only sell them in mediums or in packs with other colors.

 

Does Sapphire really feather more than Baystate?

[simonrob]

I happen to like Sharpie blue. I wish I could find a pack of the blue Sharpies with fine tips, but my local Sharpie sources only sell them in mediums or in packs with other colors.

 

Does Sapphire really feather more than Baystate?

 

No - it's the other way around; Baystate feathers badly, Sapphire slightly - as the comparison in the first post shows. (I would also note that some of the scans are misleading re colour. In my experience, there's something about the scanning process that almost always adds blue to the result. With blues this results in the removal of the purplish tint that so many blue inks have. You can see this in the scan comparing Baystate Blue to Florida Blue - there they look almost the same; they don't in real life.)

 

Simon

[JDlugosz]

Here is writing in both Diamine Sapphire and N. Baystate Blue, but processed to give you a perception of the difference rather than absolute colorimetric values. First I transformed the file to the sRGB color space, which is what consumer monitors generally do, using a "perceptual" transform. This took the out-of-range blue of Baystate Blue and turned it into Hue 220°, Saturation 100%, Brightness 72%, in sRGB coordinates. It was >100%, and this transform pegged the most extreme to 100%, and then took everything else down by proportional amounts so it "looks the same".

 

Then I further filtered it by turning down the overall Saturation and increasing the Brightness, putting everything more toward the middle range of your display.

 

http://www.dlugosz.com/Hosted/InkScans/Noodler's/Baystate%20Blue/compare-perception.jpg

 

Look at the scale at the top. If you can see each blue square as being a different Saturation, you can see the difference between the two inks. The Baystate Blue is at 100. The Sapphire is around 50 for the lightest and up to 70 for the darkest. I put a dot of each on the other so you can see them juxtaposed. The difference is much greater than either seems next to the white paper!

 

The Hue is indeed in the same ballpark: Blue leaning a bit to the green end. But Baystate Blue is off the scale in terms of just how vivid of blue it is. Sapphire is perfectly ordinary in this respect. See this gammut diagram in Wikipedia: the whole figure is human vision, and the triangle bounds the area staked out by the sRGB primaries. The Baystate Blue is past that boundary, in fact just pushing up against this boundary.

 

Of course, if you want to really see what all the fuss is about, get a sample via the Ink Exchange and try it out, even if you use a dip pen.

 

—John

[Stephen-I-am]

Here is a very quick scribble with both, which appear to reproduce very accurately on my monitor:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v693/rogerb40uk/img033.jpg

Looks very accurate to me, rogerb. I think you can capture the colors accurately with the right equipment.

 

Stephen