Herbin Bleu Nuit And Diamine Eau De Nil

[paul1962]

Hello -- so I found myself with 2 pens loaded with very similar colour inks. Before rectifying this gaffe I thought "what else could I do?"

 

Because there's one bottle ink and one cartridge ink, in different pens, there are obvious limitations to this comparison; the only thing it may tell us is that I need to work on rotation But anyway it seems silly not to make a scan;

Herbin Bleu Nuit (cartridge) in a Faber-Castell e-motion, M nib. Diamine Eau de Nil (bottle) in a Lamy Safari, LH nib. Clairefontaine A4 book

 

 

The Faber-Castell nib is of course smoother than the Lamy and broader & wetter. Overall though both are nice inks. Showthrough on the Clairefontaine was negligible. On cheap paper it was still acceptable, with a little more showthrough from the Bleu Nuit. No bleedthrough.

The feathering is very minor, but as someone who signs many forms printed on copy/multi-use paper it is noticeable. Despite these drawbacks my preference marginally leans to the Herbin, but maybe that's the experience in the better pen. Certainly in terms of colour they're quite close

 

Thanks for reading

Paul

[da vinci]

Sorry inadvertently double posted

Edited March 30, 2015 by da vinci

[da vinci]

Nice comparison thanks

 

Am I Right in thinking the Diamine is much cheaper?

[paul1962]

Nice comparison thanks

 

Am I Right in thinking the Diamine is much cheaper?

Thank you da vinci

 

Well of course I've kind of distorted the cost comparison by having one in a cartridge & one in a bottle. But looking at fair comparisons on UK's The Writing Desk -- Diamine 80ml bottle £5.65 cf Herbin D (30ml) bottle £5.99.

 

However I got the Eau de Nil in a 30ml bottle--presumably from the Diamine website where it would cost £2.67. The Herbin came in a 6-cartridge pack (in a wonderfully anachronistic tin!) which again at The Writing Desk would be £2.60. The Diamine doesn't appear to be available in their cartridge range.

 

Clearly the Diamine is much cheaper but both are relatively inexpensive I would say (at least in this part of Europe)

[Chrissy]

Your scan of J Herbin Bleu nuit looks nothing like the colour that I see from my bottle of J Herbin Bleu nuit, and for me it also isn't similar to Diamine Eau de nil which is more of a teal colour.

 

I reviewed it only yesterday Here

 

Does your J Herbin Bleu nuit look like anything that or is it my screen?

Edited March 30, 2015 by Chrissy

[paul1962]

That is remarkable, as my written sample here looks definitely like my scan, being a teal type of colour. Whereas yours is clearly a dusty purple-tinged blue colour, and therefore much more like the name would suggest to be honest.

 

Struggling to explain that one I'm afraid, because on the paper my HBN is as close to the EdN as my scan would imply. The Herbin tin of cartridges is coloured with similar teal decoration (I'll try to upload a photo later). This appears to be a design feature of the tins, as shown here http://www.thewritingdesk.co.uk/showproduct.php?brand=Herbin&range=standard-size+cartridges&cat=cartridges&subr=

 

But like I say --yours fits the product name much better. Weird!!

[Chrissy]

Someone on another forum suggested their Bleu nuit was a dark midnight blue, almost black. Darker than mine, but definitely blue not teal.

 

I have a small 10ml bottle, and the blue on the label, and on the sky in the picture, matches the blue in the bottle quite well. You can see a picture of it on the J Herbin web-site too.

 

I can easily review Diamine Eau de nil as I have that ink. I would be interested to know how different they look on screen to you.

 

For now it's a mystery

Edited March 30, 2015 by Chrissy

[Reevers]

Wow that is a significant difference between the two samples of Herbin Bleu Nuit. I prefer the colour in this scan.

[Chrissy]

That is remarkable, as my written sample here looks definitely like my scan, being a teal type of colour. Whereas yours is clearly a dusty purple-tinged blue colour, and therefore much more like the name would suggest to be honest.

 

Struggling to explain that one I'm afraid, because on the paper my HBN is as close to the EdN as my scan would imply. The Herbin tin of cartridges is coloured with similar teal decoration (I'll try to upload a photo later). This appears to be a design feature of the tins, as shown here http://www.thewritingdesk.co.uk/showproduct.php?brand=Herbin&range=standard-size+cartridges&cat=cartridges&subr=

 

But like I say --yours fits the product name much better. Weird!!

On my screen, that tin of cartridges is definitely a dark blue exactly like Bleu nuit and not a teal shade.

 

If I was you I would clean out my pen really well and let it dry then try the Bleu nuit in it again. It frequently takes me ages to get every single trace of ink out of some pen feeds.

 

Bleu nuit is not a blue green shade

Edited April 1, 2015 by Chrissy

[knarflj]

I wondered whether there was something wrong with my monitor when I first looked at this thread. I have written with both inks, though I only had a sample of Bleu Nuit, not a bottle. My Bleu Nuit sample looked just like that in Chrissy's review, a wee bit purplish and not at all teal; the Eau de Nil is a little greenish even while you're writing, and dries greener.

 

Jenny

[paul1962]

OK so I managed to get a photo of the canister;

 

 

The illustration on the canister body with the clouds and crescent moon shows the purple-blue colour we would expect from Chrissy's review, and which suits the product name. But the text "Bleu Nuit" on the rim of the lid shows a definite teal cast; and although it doesn't show up too well here it matches the colour of the vertical band to the left of the illustration and on top of the lid. I'm beginning to wonder if this is a rogue sample in some way.

 

 

On my screen, that tin of cartridges is definitely a dark blue exactly like Bleu nuit and not a teal shade.

 

If I was you I would clean out my pen really well and let it dry then try the Bleu nuit in it again. It frequently takes me ages to get every single trace of ink out of some pen feeds.

 

<snip>

 

 

That is the likeliest explanation. Its predecessor in the pen was a Waterman Blue-Black, so not overtly different; but who knows what incompatibilites may have been thrown up?

 

As it turned out today the cartridge ran out. And as I was at work I reached for a business-appropriate Mont Blanc Midnight Blue, which is behaving as expected from the off.

 

So a more scrupulous rinse and repeat experiment at some point in the future is probably called for.

Edited April 1, 2015 by paul1962

[prf5]

Makes me wonder if Bleu Nuit is to pens what the Rorschach test is to the psyche. I have used this ink in three different pens. Two were very similar, one was somewhat different, but recognizable. None of the three is close to the pictures posted by paul1962 or Chrissy.

[Chrissy]

Makes me wonder if Bleu Nuit is to pens what the Rorschach test is to the psyche. I have used this ink in three different pens. Two were very similar, one was somewhat different, but recognizable. None of the three is close to the pictures posted by paul1962 or Chrissy.

Some people have suggested that Bleu nuit writes a bit darker in wet pens

[zuerincolour]

Hm, interesting. I've written with Bleu Nuit in both wet M nibs and F nibs (I was obsessed with this ink) and it's never been a teal before. It definitely looks more like Chrissy's but just slightly less purple.