Testing a bunch of pen nibs

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This is one of those blog posts. I have purchased something. I have taken photographs of it. I have written some of the things I think about it. Regular readers (Hi Mom!) may or may not find the topic to be of interest. But there are lots of photos! Maybe boring ones! I do get a few one-off hits from Google searches, though, and somebody who is interested may stumble on this someday.

I like to draw with a dip pen, or brush, and india ink. It’s not a particularly portable medium, and there are really good, portable brush pens and pens (the Edding website is so “featureful” that I can’t tell whether the 1800 is on there or not; I chose to link instead to a retailer I’ve used and been happy with, but these pens are widely available) using permanent black pigment ink. But there’s a special magic to crisp india ink sitting at the surface of the page, becoming part of its texture, so if I’m trying to make something “finished,” I prefer this method.

I just purchased a load of new nibs, because I was trying to draw something with my old nibs the other day and couldn’t get the line as fine as I would have liked. I ordered a couple of quite fine nibs, but it’s hard to resist trying a few more when you know you’re paying for shipping (oops, I shouldn’t let on that I seriously consider buying more when shipping isn’t free — I’m more likely to make the purchase in the first place if it is, but if there’s something I really want, there’s an urge to bulk up the order a bit to make the shipping seem “better value.” D’oh!).

I’m going to show off my new nibs here, and share some first impressions. There are some things to keep in mind. One, all I’ve done is to briefly try a whole bunch of nibs in a row. The order of testing will surely have affected my impressions. Two, all nibs of one model are not identical. I bought one of each for testing, but I take the risk of generalizing unfairly if I happen to have a lemon, or if one is damaged. Three, some nibs evolve with use. Four, some nibs have preferences for papers and inks. More rambling about inks and papers at the end of this post.

For the moment, let’s just look at my new nibs!

Gillott nibs, which I’ve never used before:

Left to right: 1290 (“drawing pen”); 170; 303 (“extra fine”); 404. Each manufacturer seems to have its own aesthetic sense. Gillott’s is blue.  A corrosion-resistant film?

I made some squiggles with Sennelier India Ink on Fabriano student watercolour paper:

Don’t mind the smudges at the top there. I’m left-handed. My ability to forget the practical consequences of this is one of the reasons I would struggle with calligraphy.

The 303 clearly manages the finest line, and also has a large range of line widths. It’s a little bit fragile on account of its sharpness and flexibility, but just from playing for a couple of days, this nib is really growing on me. The 404 and the 170 are also nice. The 404 is quite robust, a nib you could sketch with and not worry too much about hurting it.

The 1290…if you look carefully in the photo, through the blurriness you can just make out that the end is crimped upward. After making my sample squiggles with this one, I concluded that it wasn’t supposed to be like that. But I believe it actually is. I didn’t get along with this example, on this paper, with this ink. I found it stalled sometimes. It may have a strong preference for smooth paper, or a thinner ink.

Now, Hunt nibs.

Left to right: 22 (“Extra fine”); 101 (“Imperial”); 513 EF (“Globe bowl pointed”); 104 (“Finest drawing”).

I already had one of each of these, except the 101. Aside from a single Esterbrook 048 Falcon (which I was unaware had acquired the status of “vintage” since I purchased mine new), Hunt nibs comprise my entire prior experience of dip pen nibs.

The 22 is reasonably fine. I find it a bit sharp and snaggy, but it’s pretty versatile.

I couldn’t at first figure out what I’d use the 101 “Imperial” for, but after playing a bit, I think I was heavy-handed (what, me?) and it would be quite dynamic in a loose style, with a light touch, possibly on smooth paper.

The 513 EF “Globe” nib is a sort of worry-free, reliable nib, but that means it’s pretty stiff and uniform.

The Hunt 104 is the only nib I purchased that rivals the Gillott 303 for fine-line capability. With its sharp stubby end, I’ve always found it a bit snaggy and frustrating to use, and my first impression with this ink/paper combination was that I much prefer the Gillott 303. However, I found it happier on smooth Bristol paper and less prone to stalling with possibly-thinner Speedball ink. Under these conditions its stiffness made it quite zippy and resilient to a less-than-subtle touch.

Next up: Leonardt.

Left to right: Leonardt 801 (“mapping”), 256, 33, 700 (“Hiro”), and General.

I made a mistake in buying the 801, as I think it might fit in my crow-quill holder but I have no idea where that is at the moment. It does fit over a thin paintbrush but the brush bristles do tend to affect things! The 700 arrived damaged, and doesn’t work. (Edit: I contacted Simon at Scribblers.co.uk and he sent along another 700 pronto. I tried it, and liked it.)

Of the ones I could test, all seemed nice enough, each with its own personality, I didn’t develop very strong opinions about them.

I bought one solitary Brause nib.

Brause number 511B.

I didn’t like it. I pretty much couldn’t get it to work. I’ll have to try it again under some different conditions. I had so much trouble getting the Sennelier ink to flow from this one that I suspect this nib may need a more thorough cleaning than the others to prime it for use. Either that or it just didn’t like my style. It sure is nice to look at, though.

Chances are, if I order more nibs, I’ll check out some more Brause ones next time.

More on papers: I used Fabriano 280gsm NOT surfaced student-grade watercolour paper for this test, and didn’t realize how lucky I’d been. When I tested The Langton Extra Smooth hot pressed paper (for “botanical or fine detail watercolour”), the ink bled, or feathered, quite badly. Daler Rowney Heavy Weight cartridge paper (220gsm) was a bit bleedy, and Frisk CS2 NOT (apparently now extinct) and 220gsm Goldline Bristol were quite good. The Bristol is smooth and much less absorbent, and the Frisk NOT has a bit of tooth but not nearly as much texture as the Fabriano NOT. Unsurprisingly, the more fragile and sharper nibs seem happier gliding around on smoother paper.

More on inks: I used a new bottle of Sennelier India Ink for the examples here. Playing a bit with my old Speedball Super Black, I find that the nibs that tend to stall with the Sennelier ink are less fussy with the Speedball. On paper that’s a bit borderline (e.g. Daler Rowney cartridge), the Speedball ink bled more than the Sennelier, and where the paper wasn’t conducive to bleeding, I imagined the line from a given nib to be a little finer with Sennelier ink. I guess the Speedball is thinner, despite my having had the bottle for years (not that it’s been open a whole lot of that time). Both inks look nice and black to me. If bleeding isn’t going to be a problem, I have an inclination to stick with Speedball because it flows a bit more easily from the finer nibs. I haven’t checked the waterproofness of the inks yet, though, which will be important for line and wash if the wash is going down after the line!

 

BBB Retro Sportglasses

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Back when I rode a bike only occasionally, for fun, I didn’t understand how cyclists wearing lycra, padded gloves, and eye shields could be anything but posers. However, since becoming reliant on cycling to cover distances, I can confirm the utility of all the above-mentioned items.†

Taking things one step further, cycling accessories have become so well integrated into my life that I am working them into a new tradition, which is to to lose them over the summer so that I can buy new ones. My gloves vanished (likely dropped when I stopped to take a photo) several months ago, now, obviously, or it would have been odd weather for winter gloves.

More recently, my MEC Espresso eye shields evaporated one afternoon somewhere between the nursery and the playground. I had been annoyed to lose my winter gloves after only one season of use. I was more annoyed to lose the glasses, because a) I can’t buy them in the UK (shipping from Canada is silly-expensive), and b) I have several spare lenses for that frame. I am even more annoyed now that I look into it, because c) I can’t buy the frame in Canada anymore either, according the MEC website: they’re discontinued.

Because I don’t seem to be able to cycle five miles without attacking a flying insect with my eyeball, I quickly ordered some “budget” glasses online: BBB Retro Sportglasses, with clear, yellow, and dark lenses.

It’s hard to buy something online that has to fit in a certain way, and yet I try because I don’t like shopping. I look at what reviews I can find, and take a stab. Here are my observations on these glasses, in case someone else is trying the same thing.

Firstly, I think these are nice-enough looking glasses. They’re not flashy, but they come at a reasonable price, considering they come with three sets of lenses for different light conditions.

Swapping out the two-piece lenses on the fly is a bit of a pain: I found I was prone to dropping at least one piece in my efforts to avoid letting the lens pieces rub against each other. That’s no problem in the winter when all I wear is the clear lens. As I’ve proven already, if the glasses fit, you may almost as well get two pairs for different conditions anyway, and then you’ll have one left when you lose one.

Fit-wise, the lenses angle in significantly, and I find that either my ears are not low enough, my nose is not high enough, or my brow is not prominent enough to keep the bottom edge of the lens from digging into the bottom of my eye socket. The first day I wore these on the ride to work I had the disconcerting experience of glancing in the mirror to discover the sudden appearance of a second set of circles under my eyes!‡ It’s worth noting that I’m not a man, so these glasses were probably not designed with my face type in mind.

The top of the frame is quite curved, again lovely and spacious for a strong forehead but on my face it’s just a silly-looking gap by which bugs and rain access my eyeballs.

All in all, I think these glasses merit the term “good value” if they fit.  I was going to try to make them work for this winter, but I can’t seem to figure out where I put them.

†I still hanker a little after a Poseur jersey, even though some people might take it the wrong way given that my fastest ride has 26″ wheels with 1.5″ slick tires.

‡Perhaps I should say “sudden reappearance,” because in the first year of G’s life I had an actual second bag under each eye.

Nikon D90 vs itself and two compacts

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Not really. This is nothing like a rigorous comparison of anything to anything. That would be work and this is for fun.

The other day I posted the first photo I took with my Nikon D90.  Never having had a dSLR before, I’ve been impressed with its capabilities.

I wasn’t sure how much of my impression was because it’s so neat to hold and use, and because I’m invested (financially and emotionally) in the idea that it should take better pictures than my old compact cameras, a 2006-era Canon Powershot A700, and a 2008-era Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3.  To be sure, the D90 focuses faster, has less high-ISO noise, and ratchets happily through several shots in a burst, vastly improving my chances of a good shot of a moving subject.  It is, of course, gigantic by comparison.

Here’s another look at my D90’s first shot, using a 35mm prime lens at f1.8.  I would tweak the composition if I were doing it again.  I’m still pleased with it, in that I like the subject and it’s not badly out of focus.  I went straight for the shallowest depth of field I could get with my new toy.

Because the subject of the photo is good at holding still (when G is asleep), it’s a good candidate for a gentle comparison with cameras that don’t focus as fast and need more light.  I decided to take some shots of it with the A700 and the LX3, to see more clearly what’s different about using the different cameras for the (admittedly narrow) category of close-ups of small, motionless toy cars.

I think it’s fair to say these cameras both stretch the designation “point-and-shoot.”  Both have manual modes available, allowing aperture, shutter speed, and focus to be set explicitly (although the manual focus is done with a button or joystick and has to be assessed on the digital display, all of which is highly irritating).

The LX3 has a peculiarly wide-angled bias, sacrificing zoom for light-collecting efficiency, and, well, wide angle.  My A700, with its “6x” zoom, covers the other extreme reasonably well, so the two complement each other well.

Here’s a try for shallow depth of field with the LX3, at f2.0, its max aperture:

Zooming out all the way lets me access this wide aperture setting, as well as letting me get in close, which increases the relative distances between things I want in focus and things I don’t.

Don’t mind the background.  One of these days I’ll develop an eye for composition.

Here’s another LX3 shot, zoomed in a bit and taken at f2.6.  Sometimes you don’t even need the shallowest depth of field you can get.  This shot has less of the wide-angle distortion evident in the preceding photo.  On an unrelated topic, it’s nice to keep the background objects under control a little!

Moving on to the ol’ A700:

That is the biggest aperture available on that camera: “f2.8.” There’s an unfortunate coincidence of a light-reflecting fold in the blanket in the background that makes it look as if the blown-out reflection on the helmet is accompanied by a fuzzy halo.

Try backing up and zooming in, with a resulting narrowing of the aperture to f4.8:

Again, sometimes a bit more depth of field is a nice thing.  I put those dust fibres on the toy just to test the crispness of focus.

The other thing about the A700 is that it’s small and easy to grip.  This means that on cycling trips I didn’t miss shots like this.  I wouldn’t have the same confidence with the LX3, with its stingy little grip-like protrusion, and with the D90, well, ferget it.  If you have to stop riding to take the photo, you’ve already missed it.  With a nice SLR, you could get some different awesome photos, but stopping every time I see a photo I want to take would be excruciating for F.  We already practice “just-in-time” (or the closely-related but less hyped “too-late”) bike touring, as regards the opening hours of food stores, restaurants, and campsite offices.

To be honest, I like all of these shots.  That happy little plastic head on wheels just makes me feel like smiling.

Finally: the D90 was cheating in that first photo.  Here’s an attempt to get in close with the kit lens (18-105mm f3.5-5.6):

Here I had to zoom in to get the car to fill up very much of the frame, as the lens can’t focus from very close to the subject.  The widest aperture available at this zoom was f5.6.

With the kit lens, the D90 really isn’t as appropriate for this subject as my all-rounder compact cameras.  Which is fine, because that’s the point of having interchangeable lenses.  Clearly the f1.8, 35mm lens I took that first photo with gives a huge advantage if you’re after “bokeh” (someday I will probably not feel that this is an acutely pretentious term, but for now I can’t use it straight, so on go the quotation marks). It is sobering to realize that this lens on its own cost, if I remember correctly, about 80% of what I paid for the entire Powershot A700 camera in 2006.