Inky Question For Ef Nib Users

[A Smug Dill]

But if there's an EF nib in most reviews, it's just a short sample from one EF nib (which often seems the width of my fattest EF) and that's it.

For now, my inclination is to use – time and energy allowing – the following, in the order as listed, to demonstrate the behaviour and/or performance of inks in reviews with a slant towards users of fine nibs:

1. Sailor 11-0073-120 (N.B. -120 at the end means EF nib in Sailor's product numbers, if I'm not mistaken) desk pen – fed by a converter, and maybe also as a dip pen only, although I don't think the difference in the outcomes is great – as a moderately 'wet' EF writer.
2. Platinum DP-1000AN with EF nib as a dip pen, as a 'dry' EF writer.
3. If No.2 above proves too 'dry' for some reason, then the Platinum DPQ-700A with EF nib as a dip pen, as a 'drier' EF writer than the Sailor pen in No.1 above.
4. Sailor 11-0127-740 (with 40° Fude nib) clipless pen, fed by a converter (from No.1 above), writing with the nib upside-down.
5. Sailor 11-0127-740, fed by a converter, writing in broad strokes with the nib in 'normal' orientation, i.e. slit facing up and/or away from me.
6. Platinum DP-1000AN with F nib as a dip pen, to show the colour intensity of 'wet' writing that overwhelms shading, with a nib that still lays down reasonably thin lines (i.e. as opposed to 'European medium' or broad nibs).
7. 
   

If I already have a more expensive pen with 'Japanese fine' or EF nib on rotation that is filled with the ink being reviewed, I'll probably include a writing sample from that too, but I'm not inclined to fill a 'nice' pen of a model that some review reader may perchance use in his/her everyday applications, just for the purposes of 'rounding out' an ink review.

[LizEF]

For now, my inclination is to use – time and energy allowing – the following, in the order as listed, to demonstrate the behaviour and/or performance of inks in reviews with a slant towards users of fine nibs:

1. Sailor 11-0073-120 (N.B. -120 at the end means EF nib in Sailor's product numbers, if I'm not mistaken) desk pen – fed by a converter, and maybe also as a dip pen only, although I don't think the difference in the outcomes is great – as a moderately 'wet' EF writer.
2. Platinum DP-1000AN with EF nib as a dip pen, as a 'dry' EF writer.
3. If No.2 above proves too 'dry' for some reason, then the Platinum DPQ-700A with EF nib as a dip pen, as a 'drier' EF writer than the Sailor pen in No.1 above.
4. Sailor 11-0127-740 (with 40° Fude nib) clipless pen, fed by a converter (from No.1 above), writing with the nib upside-down.
5. Sailor 11-0127-740, fed by a converter, writing in broad strokes with the nib in 'normal' orientation, i.e. slit facing up and/or away from me.
6. Platinum DP-1000AN with F nib as a dip pen, to show the colour intensity of 'wet' writing that overwhelms shading, with a nib that still lays down reasonably thin lines (i.e. as opposed to 'European medium' or broad nibs).

If I already have a more expensive pen with 'Japanese fine' or EF nib on rotation that is filled with the ink being reviewed, I'll probably include a writing sample from that too, but I'm not inclined to fill a 'nice' pen of a model that some review reader may perchance use in his/her everyday applications, just for the purposes of 'rounding out' an ink review.

 

 

Looks like a good set. Should give sufficient diversity while still staying in the narrow range.

[minddance]

Wrt to dipping, I find variables affecting the amount of ink laid onto paper: length of nib/section(?) immersed and duration of time dipped.

 

Is it the very tip of the nib dipped or is or the whole visible span of nib dipped or is the section dipped as well?

 

And how long is the pen dipped?

[A Smug Dill]

Is it the very tip of the nib dipped or is or the whole visible span of nib dipped or is the section dipped as well?

 

And how long is the pen dipped?

 

 

Fair questions. Here's a photo of my desk pens:

and I generally try to make sure the breather hole (if there is one) is submerged when I dip, but avoid the ink actually touching the plastic at the tip of the section. In other words, I aim to dip so that the surface of the ink is somewhere in the regions I highlighted in the image with translucent green rectangles.

 

I don't – and I'm not really inclined to – time how long I dip the pens. At a rough guess, the first dip is somewhere in the vicinity of three to five seconds, and subsequent dips one to two seconds. My 'test' after a dip is to touch (or scrape) the bottom side of the feed against the inside of the rim of the ink bottle opening, and then rotate the pen to touch the top side of the nib against the rim; if I see ink trickle down the inside of the neck of the ink bottle, then I'll assume the nib is sufficiently inked. After the first dip, I usually make a few quick strokes on a scrap piece of paper to check that the nib will write, before using it on the test page.

[Bookman]

 

Thanks, Bookman. I understand that you would get something from the review (and that's OK, not trying to argue, just trying to understand). But would you get something about the ink in EF nibs? Regardless of whether I end up providing what you're looking for, I am sincerely curious about your thoughts here - others have convinced me that things which I thought weren't unique to EF nibs and therefore didn't need to be in my reviews might actually be unique to EF nibs. So, if the answer is simply that you would find this useful not for evaluating the ink in EF, but useful for your own purposes, that's fine. But if you actually think it would be useful for evaluating the ink in an EF nib, I honestly want to understand that.

 

As A Smug Dill said, my goal is to fill that gap for us EF users where the vast majority of reviews out there already show the ink it broader nibs (sometimes many broader nibs and swabs and splashes). But if there's an EF nib in most reviews, it's just a short sample from one EF nib (which often seems the width of my fattest EF) and that's it.

 

My other thought is that if one wants to know about an ink, the wise thing is to check out many reviews. Thus, my review would be just one of many, and the other reviews a person checks would show them things like look from fatter nibs, swabs, color comparisons, etc.

 

I sometimes get a better understanding of an ink if I can see what it isn't as well as what it is. I might miss the red aspects of an orange if I don't see a truer orange on one side of the writing and a red or redder orange on the other side. I can more readily see blue in a blue-black if I see blue on one side of it and black on the other. Sometimes I can't tell that a dark blue or blue-black isn't really black until I see black next to it. The same is true for nibs and the color and other visual qualities of ink coming out of them. An ink review with your EF nibs might or might not say something about how the same ink would look coming out of Marty's EFs or Gladys's, even with ostensibly the same pens and therefore the same nibs as theirs. Only time will tell whether the EFs you use will be both representative and sufficient. A brief contrast of other nib sizes wouldn't make your EF-centered review any less EF-centered. And for me, a juxtaposition of one sentence from an EEF, F, and M around the same sentence written with an EF would tell me considerably more about the ink than an EF or handful of EFs standing together but alone.

[LizEF]

I sometimes get a better understanding of an ink if I can see what it isn't as well as what it is. I might miss the red aspects of an orange if I don't see a truer orange on one side of the writing and a red or redder orange on the other side. I can more readily see blue in a blue-black if I see blue on one side of it and black on the other. Sometimes I can't tell that a dark blue or blue-black isn't really black until I see black next to it. The same is true for nibs and the color and other visual qualities of ink coming out of them. An ink review with your EF nibs might or might not say something about how the same ink would look coming out of Marty's EFs or Gladys's, even with ostensibly the same pens and therefore the same nibs as theirs. Only time will tell whether the EFs you use will be both representative and sufficient. A brief contrast of other nib sizes wouldn't make your EF-centered review any less EF-centered. And for me, a juxtaposition of one sentence from an EEF, F, and M around the same sentence written with an EF would tell me considerably more about the ink than an EF or handful of EFs standing together but alone.

 

Thank you! I will ponder this. Not sure what decision I'll reach, but now I understand your point.

[A Smug Dill]

Ahhhhh, another three pens – including my first Pilot Vanishing Point EF nib – and two inks arrived in the post this week so far (and it's only Tuesday afternoon!), and my thinking on this review thing haven't quite caught up!

 

I'll probably compare the EF nibs on my new Pilot VP, and my Pilot Elite 95S which came a couple of weeks ago, against the EF nibs on the desk pens using one particular ink – probably either Diamine Oxblood (already in the E95S) Sailor Jentle yodaki – this once just to calibrate, so that I (and anyone else) can later on make mental adjustments to guess at, “What would this ink be like with an EF-nibbed Pilot Elite 95S?” when seeing test results produced by the desk pens.

[XYZZY]

Two more suggestions, requests. These are not specific to reviews of EF nibs. But Liz and Dill both seem to be embarking on new projects and are thinking about methodology...

 

Describe your methodology, but link to it from the review instead of copying the whole description:

 

Once you figure out your methodology, how about write it up and post it. If your reviews are posted here on FPN then you could just have a single thread titled "Here's how Dill does reviews", and then your review threads link to it. Then in your reviews just provide a link to it. That way you don't need to clutter each review with "Here's how I test..." followed by several paragraphs. Dill, I like that you think about things like humidity and barometric pressure, have a place NOT IN THE REVIEW where you could mention that those things may effect the outcome and that you're not attempting to take that into account would be good, but best if it's not in the body of every review.

 

Do something for color management:

 

Color management is a whole other rabbit hole that you could jump down, but may not want to. It's why the same color looks different out of different cameras, or the same camera with different settings. And it's why the same photo looks different when viewed on two different monitors. More importantly, it's why two people photographing the same writing sample will produce two different photos. Replace "photo" with "video" or "scan" as necessary.

 

At the very least, if you had an 18% grey card sitting in the background on your photos then somebody knowledgeable about color management could take your images and adjust them for local viewing. Even better would be you doing the adjustment yourself before posting. Gray cards can be cheap, but get one intended for the purpose. E.g. https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/231564-REG/Delta_98705C_Gray_Card_4.html. You can go a lot fancier, too, but I'm not trying to push anybody into that rabbit hole.

 

If your description of methodology described what you're doing for color management then +2.

 

And as I said before, I'll be grateful for your reviews regardless. If my suggestions sound like something you hate then by all means ignore them.

 

[LizEF]

Thanks, XYZZY. I already plan to document the methods I use. I don't have software for color correction and as near as I can tell, to do even a half-way decent job requires some expensive, specialized software plus education. I just don't see that happening. I don't even have a digital camera that I can point at something and say "this is white" (or if my cell phone will do that, I don't have software that exposes the option). But I already plan to include Pantone CMYK and grayscale cards in the review and any photos/scans.

[BaronWulfraed]

Even GIMP can do the correction...

 

http://www.comfsm.fm/~dleeling/cis/gimp.html

Note: for that -- if you have a grey card in the image, use the middle eye-dropper and click on the grey card. That will set the grey point and should correct for tint (incandescent light tends to be reddish). White and Black point is usually done by clicking on the brightest (but not blown out) and darkest (but not absolute 0/0/0) highlight and shadow. That will stretch the color range to the maximum.

[LizEF]

Even GIMP can do the correction...

 

http://www.comfsm.fm/~dleeling/cis/gimp.html

Note: for that -- if you have a grey card in the image, use the middle eye-dropper and click on the grey card. That will set the grey point and should correct for tint (incandescent light tends to be reddish). White and Black point is usually done by clicking on the brightest (but not blown out) and darkest (but not absolute 0/0/0) highlight and shadow. That will stretch the color range to the maximum.

 

Hmm. Thanks for this. I'll check it out, but likely not until next year. Work is going to be swamped until then, trying to minimize the impact of my departure. What little experience I have with this sort of thing, it works well on photos like the example, but not on photos of "a bunch of ink on white paper". But I'm willing to give it a go.

[A Smug Dill]

@XYZZY, I have one of these in A4 size:

 

 

but which are the parts you need? Just the two I circled?

 

@BaronWulfraed, thanks for that. I was just about to say I only use GIMP. I think I tried to set all three of white point, grey point and black point but it wouldn't let me choose more than one.

[BaronWulfraed]

@BaronWulfraed, thanks for that. I was just about to say I only use GIMP. I think I tried to set all three of white point, grey point and black point but it wouldn't let me choose more than one.

 

I have to confess I normally use PhotoShop CS4 (never did go to CS6, which was the last version that still ran natively on Windows -- the newer versions seem to be subscription and require network access for functionality). And my VirtualBox install of Debian isn't working with the GuestExtensions, so I can't mount the shared folder, nor cut&paste across the two OS so it got difficult to get an image in to test.

 

So far as I can tell, the three eye-droppers on Colors/Levels worked for me.

Click middle dropper; click on grey part of image (I used your posted chart, so didn't expect any major changes)

Click on left dropper; click on black square

Click on right dropper; click on white square

 

When picking "edit as curves" it displayed a subtle change -- mostly in the blue, red and green moved nearly identically.

 

Just did this in PSCS4 (where the curves dialog also has the eye droppers). The resulting lines in the graph look very similar to the ones shown by GIMP in Debian.

[XYZZY]

@XYZZY, I have one of these in A4 size:

 

...

 

but which are the parts you need? Just the two I circled?

 

 

The top circled group should do the trick. I'm assuming you actually purchased the target and it's not a PDF that you downloaded and printed?

 

Unless you're going to get really then the main point of the color strip is for taking your already adjusted photo (from the grayscale) and then adjusting your monitor or printer to correctly reproduce the colors.

 

I'm assuming that for this... you photograph your ink sample with the grayscale somewhere in the photo, then adjust the photo (gimp, photoshop, lightroom, ...). Then post photo. Even if you don't want to adjust, post the photo as-is and then those of us so inclined (ahem) can save and adjust the photo locally.

 

Another way you can do it (but more complicated), is shoot just your gray target by itself, in the same setting & lighting that you're going to shoot your ink, then shoot the ink sample. Most photo software will let you do the auto color adjustment for the first photo, and then copy that same adjustment to other photos. That way you don't have the target in "real" photo.

 

I just realized that I probably wrote too much. I'm trying to make it easy and might have made it seem more complicated than it is . If you want, ignore everything I wrote except the 3rd paragraph

Edited October 11, 2018 by XYZZY

[A Smug Dill]

I'm assuming you actually purchased the target and it's not a PDF that you downloaded and printed?

Yes, I have the actual retail product.

 

I'm assuming that for this... you photograph your ink sample with the grayscale somewhere in the photo, then adjust the photo (gimp, photoshop, lightroom, ...). Then post photo. Even if you don't want to adjust, post the photo as-is and then those of us so inclined (ahem) can save and adjust the photo locally.

Will do.

 

So far as I can tell, the three eye-droppers on Colors/Levels worked for me.

Click middle dropper; click on grey part of image (I used your posted chart, so didn't expect any major changes)

Click on left dropper; click on black square

Click on right dropper; click on white square

What I meant was, on the Mac:

 

I'm not sure whether clicking one of the eye-dropper buttons to the right of 'Auto', then selecting a point on the image as the black/grey/white point, would undo whatever was already selected earlier with the same procedure. As in, if I click on the eye-dropper for black point, select a black point on the image (and I can see changes being previewed), then click on the eye-dropper for grey point, and select a grey point on the image, would that effectively have undone the black point selection?

Edited October 11, 2018 by A Smug Dill

[BaronWulfraed]

Another way you can do it (but more complicated), is shoot just your gray target by itself, in the same setting & lighting that you're going to shoot your ink, then shoot the ink sample. Most photo software will let you do the auto color adjustment for the first photo, and then copy that same adjustment to other photos. That way you don't have the target in "real" photo.

 

Though if one does not have manual controls of the camera (most cell phone cameras tend to only give options for flash/no-flash) it is likely the "auto-white balance" of the camera will have used different settings for the grey card vs the actual subject shot -- and that will negate any post-processing of copying settings from one image to another.

 

If one DOES have full manual controls, filling the image with the grey card under fixed lighting/zoom/etc. many SLR cameras will allow one to select that image to "define" the white balance setting to be used for subsequent shots. One should also lock the aperture/shutter to that used for the grey card.

[Misfit]

Hi LizEF, me again with my useless input. I was looking through my Lamy pens today, and found an EF nib on the Lamy Nexx metal version. I have not used it in awhile, so as I wrote before, I will.

 

But that will be when your reviews are up, and I see Mr. Hippo in them or one of them. If I have the ink you show, that will be what I put in the Nexx.

 

I usually write in cursive, and wider nibs make my writing look better. Back in the ballpoint days, I had nice handwriting. With regular nibs, if I slow down, writing looks good enough. But stub and italic nibs (sorry EF users) make my handwriting look great. That’s why I love those nibs. When I use the Lamy EF maybe printing at first would be good.

 

Anyway, sorry to interrupt with my requests to see Mr. Hippo.

[A Smug Dill]

But stub and italic nibs (sorry EF users) make my handwriting look great.

 

I didn't know that stub and italic nibs, as grinds, cuts and/or shapes, are mutually exclusive with Fine or even Extra Fine nib widths. Aren't those descriptors more about the angles and the ratios on the nib/tipping?

[LizEF]

Hi LizEF, me again with my useless input. I was looking through my Lamy pens today, and found an EF nib on the Lamy Nexx metal version. I have not used it in awhile, so as I wrote before, I will.

 

But that will be when your reviews are up, and I see Mr. Hippo in them or one of them. If I have the ink you show, that will be what I put in the Nexx.

 

I usually write in cursive, and wider nibs make my writing look better. Back in the ballpoint days, I had nice handwriting. With regular nibs, if I slow down, writing looks good enough. But stub and italic nibs (sorry EF users) make my handwriting look great. That’s why I love those nibs. When I use the Lamy EF maybe printing at first would be good.

 

Anyway, sorry to interrupt with my requests to see Mr. Hippo.

 

http://www.paradoxcommunity.com/vps/DearMisfit.jpg

[LizEF]

I didn't know that stub and italic nibs, as grinds, cuts and/or shapes, are mutually exclusive with Fine or even Extra Fine nib widths. Aren't those descriptors more about the angles and the ratios on the nib/tipping?

 

Technically, you are correct, and there's more variety of stub sizes these days, but generally, I think folks associate "stub" (and its relatives) with the typical 1.1, thus a broader width. Nemosine's 0.6mm stub, and some Pilot stubs in differing widths, as well as some custom grinds may change this default thinking yet.