Here it is! Color is dead on on my monitor so hopefully it's close for everyone else! Enjoy!

Click to view attachment

-Penguin

Thanks for getting this review up for those of us who've yet to order it, penguin. Excellent color!

Great review!

Now I cannot wait for mine to arrive!

Thanks for the review, now I want my order to come in even more! Especially since it works so well in a Pelikan.

Hmm... interesting color. On my monitor, it does look like a night sky. Nice!

Thanks for the review!


Goes off to order a bottle... - yay!

Ah, I've been waiting for this review. I would thank you, but now I want to buy it. That's not such a problem, except that if I buy this I have to buy the brown as well. Which isn't necessarily a problem...

Ok. I'll wait for the first shipment's round of reviews come out, and Wim completely convinces me.

Looks great!!! My wife just called to tell me that my bottle arrived today. SO when i get home thats the first thing i'm doing:filling a pen!!!

Jim

From the preliminary reviews, it looks like everyone who had a hand in this ink outdid themselves, from Elaine to Nathan to NeoTiger and everyone else who voted and pitched in.

This ink looks great! I currently have two pens in the work rotation with Legal Lapis, I think one of them will now get the Starry Night Blue, even though it isn't a bulletproof.

Thanks for the review, it looks great. Looking forward to mine arriving.

I received my order today and just inked up my Pelikan 200 with the Binder .7mm cursive italic - this is just the ink I've been looking for. It's the darker side of Blue Black and reminds me of a bolder version of vintage Quink Blue Black or MB Blue Black. So far the ink is well behaved, no feathering on paper that isn't exactly top notch. It dries quickly and leaves a clean line. It has decent shading with the CI nib, even with my atrocious handwriting. I believe this is an ink I could get used to. Now on to the brown (after the lawn is mowed).

Just got mine. It's a nice ink, but more on the grey-black side than blue, IMO. As for me, I like the result from mixing 3 parts Starry Night with 1 part Namiki Blue to make it a little bluer and more water-resistant.

Thanks to the Admins for all their work!

I just knew mine would be here today!!! Sitting here on pins and needles "patiently" waiting!

I'm really looking forward to adding it to my Pelikan M625 Blue and Sterling. That happens tomorrow!

My thought exactly!! My 625 is flushed and just dying to try out the new ink!!

In my pens it's just black. Well, there's a hint of blue.

I'm soaking an old Osmiroid (notoriously dry) so I can see the blue.

And wondering if Richard can provide a fine-ish cursive oblique with reduced flow. All my pens are such wet writers or have such fine lines that they aren't showing off the blue in this ink.

Just like an FPN'er to consider buying a new nib just to match a new ink!

Hey, at least I'm not considering buying a new pen.

hmm....

What would look good with a deep, dark blue? M215 perhaps? Oooh, I know. The blue Sapporo Mini.

(where did hubby hide that credit card?)

It would be very intersting to see a comparison of the new FPN Van Gogh ink with Noodlers Ellis Island Blue Black. On my monitor at least they look quite similar. Ellis Island may be a tad darker?

Nice review! I received mine two days ago and inked up a Sheaffer with a fine/medium Triumph nib and was surprised to see the ink shade from a deep blue to grayish black with that nib.

The only complaint I have: I know a 'full bottle' is usually desirable, but I needed a *little* headspace - I couldn't use the ink without sending a little trickle down the side of the bottle (fortunately narrowly missing the label!)

I can't wait to receive my bottle! A Richard Binder ItalFine nib is on its way--whatever pen I fit that nib into, will also be filled with Starry Night Blue.

My Starry Night Blue arrived yesterday. I filled a Sheaffer Balance II with a stub nib last night and had equally good results.

Thanks to all involved for a great job!

I'm with you on this one, KCat. To my eye, this ink has hardly any blue, and I've tried it in various moderate-to-wet writing pens. However, when I made a mix of 3 parts Starry Night Blue, 2 parts Diamine Sapphire Blue, and 1 part Namiki Blue, it came out to be a pretty nice blue-black with no discernible green tinge, and the mix still has nice shading properties. If you don't have Namiki Blue, I think a 1:1 mix of Starry Night and Sapphire Blue would be fine, too.

Don

I guess my hand shook from the excitement. When I opened the bottle, I got a splotch down the side and a corner of the label. I fumed. My wife (who is much better at this than I) noted that now the ink bottle looks like it belongs to a "user" and not just a "collector." That bottle was very full. I do love the ink! /Craig

http://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/in...showtopic=64131
There's another writing sample with this ink at the above link. I used a Medium nib in a Pilot Vanishing Point.
Dr. Grace - did you gently shake or rotate the bottle of ink before loading into your pen? That makes a lot of difference in the colors I get out of Noodler's inks.

No, I didn't. I assume that having just been brought by the postman, it would have been agitated enough. But maybe you're right? On the other hand, the recent scans , including the one you made, look similarly non-blue.

Looks like a dead ringer for Ellis Island on my screen. (Well, maybe a tick lighter.) But... I'll reserve judgment until my bottle arrives -- with any luck, on Saturday.

So, anyone with it also have KCat vials ready? I want to trade for some.

In my wet, fine nibs, I get a similar result. Not complaining - to me it's a great representation of the dark night sky and a great blue-black to boot! Well done, all!

It doesn't quite look like the original sample Nathan gave to Elaine

I've been thinking the same thing: it doesn't look like the scans that Elaine posted. To me, if it has the word "Blue" in the name, it should look bluish. But that's only my opinion!

However, after some more experimentation I find that a 1:1 mixture of FPN Starry Night Blue with Private Reserve Midnight Blues is a great blue-black in which you can actually see some blue, and it also has nice shading properties.

Don

Doesn't Private Reserve Midnight Blues already offer these traits?

Depends on whether you think Midnight Blues is actually a blue-black or a very dark blue. I like Midnight Blues as is, but I think this mixture gives a different flavor. Maybe you could generate a similar thing from mixing PRMB and a good black. I'm just trying to make good use of my bottle of Starry Night "Blue", which is not quite what I expected.

Real nice, but maybe Starry Night Gray?

Interesting.

I think it is the shading properties of the ink, though, myself. Here is a qtip swabbing of my bottle of Starry Night Blue. The 2 big squiggles were made when I first just touched one edge of the qtip to the ink. The rest were made when I completely dunked the same qtip into the ink. The complete dunk resulted in a much darker, midnight blue, where the first edge touched swabbing looks much lighter, drier, and less bluish, maybe. Kind of looks like a dusk sky to midnight sky shading to me. I think it might be the same depending upon what type of nib is used in a pen, whether fine or broad and wet or dry.

Click to view attachment

Here's a side by side comparision of the official scan and kiavonne's.



One thing I notice is the bluish tint of the paper on the scan at the right. Could this mean that the scan was skewed towards the blue? To my eye the left scan is a match for the actual ink. Of course, I don't know whether the actual ink sample and the delivered product match either.

Stephen

Or the auto-exposure could have tried to make the background more neutral, removing some color cast but stopping short of gray. I recall shooting a model against a blue sheet and the auto-white-balance on the early digital camera didn't understand, and it looked funny.

Or it could be under-exposed and the brightness enhancers look blue.

Without calebration, the next best thing is to include another object as a color reference. A US $1 bill (or fragment of) will serve as a good blue/green reference that anyone in the US can easily duplicate and instinctively know the right color of in the scene. (Just munge the "seal" if it's in the shot, to keep it legal.)

You can also get a "gray card" quite cheap. Include that in the scan next to the page, or expose using that first and then scan.

--John

Interesting variations between these two scans. To my eye, that one on the right looks just like PR-Midnite Blue. I actually didn't purchase a bottle because I thought it might look so similar to PR-MB. I'm just going to have to see it in person before I decide.

Dave

I'll be sure to compare it side-by-side with PR-MB once I get a sample of Starry Night.

Please do. I am also interested in seeing a side by side comparison of the two.

I too am having a hard time finding blue in mine. I guess I need to take it out in some real light and get out from under the fluorescents and see what it looks like. Of course it could be my eyes. I had to get my wife to either buy black slacks or navy slacks but not both. I can't see the difference when getting dressed in the morning, same with socks!

A more apt comparison, I think, is with Noodler's Midnight Blue. PR's Midnight Blues is not quite as dark as Starry Night and quite a bit more blue. Nooder's Midnight Blue is more-or-less as dark as Starry Night but also more blue (but not to the extent that PR's Midnight Blues is). The difference is subtle. Written with a wet nib, they look essentially the same. Smear some about on a page (or, presumably, write with a broad italic nib), where the ink is thinner the difference is noticeable. However, it's so slight that if someone told me they were the same ink, but from different batches, I would believe it. (My two bottles of Noodler's Nightshade are at least as different from each other as Starry Night and Midnight Blue.) Starry Night is quite a nice colour, but of the three I like it least (PR's Midnight Blues the most); and I would suggest that anyone who already Noodler's Midnight Blue doesn't need Starry Night.

Simon

OK, what color is it?



The Hue is 211°, which is lower (more toward Cyan, less from true Blue) than PR Midnight Blues. It also has even less saturation than PM-MB at its darkest. That is, it's more gray than blue. On this picture, the Brightness slider is shown, and it is cyan at the top, black at the bottom, and gray in the middle.

These scans have calibrated correct values in the file, with an embedded ICC profile for Adobe RGB. You should be able to compare any of my review scans side-by-side to see the difference, because the exposure and adjustment is exactly the same in each ink scan. To aid color perception on your monitor, there is a thin white border to show the paper color (the paper is faintly blue in sunlight) and a gray matte. The matte is perfectly neutral, so judge the color relative to that.

In particular, you can compare against PR-MB in the same Wing Sung 237 pen.









—John


These images are hosted on my site, only to relieve the server burden. I specifically grant the right of FPN to re-host them, back them up, or otherwise to maintain continuity of this content, as they see fit.

This is the ink for pens that Pelikan Blue-Black doesn't work in. I've had it down a fine Snorkel Admiral (moist) and a Waterman Phileas (middling). It's the colour just before black in the night sky, intimating without admitting to blueness, out of the former, and a deeper, burly version of the watery aspect of the Pelikan colour out of the other-- blue-black indeed, with a firm grip on the sense of black. It is, indeed, darker than the Pelikan even when the Pelikan comes out of a pen it agrees with.




Amen, brother! I have a suspicion that the Noodler's Ink Labs are rather closer to sea level than my living room.

You just provided an answer to a question that had been nagging me for quite a while.

Thanks

I did a water-soak test last night-- after 10 minutes in the water, the ink faded somewhat but I'd still rate it as a very dark grey; if not bulletproof, it's highly projectile-resistant. I think I know what I'm signing my oncoming child's birth documents with.

Unless you need (or want) water resistance. Starry Night has a good deal of that; Noodler's Midnight Blue, very little. The tradeoff is that, with Starry Night, you also get a lot more gray, which makes it hard for me to warm to. I much prefer PR Midnight Blues or Noodler's Manhattan Blue (both of which, incidentally, have respectable water resistance).

I have both Noodler's Midnight Blue and Starry Night. I still have to check for water resistance, thanks for mentioning it, Viseguy!

Attached is a scan (unretouched; sorry, I don't know how to calibrate) of the 2 inks. Starry Night appears darker than Midnight Blue on the HP paper, a dark blue-grey with more blue than grey to my eyes. I dipped a Waterman flex pen (still have to learn how to write flex) to write the samples.

Could be my monitor, but that's got to be the muddiest color I've seen for a 'blue' ink.

More on water resistance-- I messed up a cheque yesterday, so I left it standing in a cup of water for about 10 hours. The high-notes of blue seem to migrate towards the dry part of the paper (very peacocky and unexpected), some components seem to slide down the paper, leaving a very dark greyish-purple remainer that doesn't seem likely to shift. Gratifying permanence.

I have just used my new bottle of FPN blue and I have to say I really like it. It has a great feel, and the color seems vintage and very nice. I have to shout out a thanks to everyone who worked on this project. (and to the other colors as well. I like them too, but the blue is my fav.)