About My Reviews

[Venemo]

Saskia,

 

Can I ask you something quite trivial about your reviews? How do you photograph them and what kind of camera do you use? I've found that it's not so easy to create a photo of a writing that retains the colors correctly.

[saskia_madding]

I use an absolutely ANCIENT digital Sony cyber-shot camera, back from the days when 6 megapixels was mindblowingly good quality. I take my pictures in front of my office window (it's up on the 8th floor and is incredibly dirty, so sometimes there are shadow spots on the pictures ... eek!), and I only take pictures when the sun is brilliantly shining down on my ink review journal. If it is dark, overcast, or even just a smidgen cloudy, I don't bother. Honestly, for me, it seems that lots of natural light is the only thing that keeps the colours close to their original look.

[Venemo]

Honestly, for me, it seems that lots of natural light is the only thing that keeps the colours close to their original look.

 

That's the conclusion I came to, too, but I secretly hoped that you have some secret sauce that made it work in artifical light as well.

[saskia_madding]

Ha! Sadly, no. Today it was sunny for like 15 minutes, and I snapped a ton of pictures in a frenzy of all the reviews I've not yet posted. Sometimes, you've just got to grab the moment when it comes.

[EclecticCollector]

You are added, serpent. Check out your personal messages and we can leave Saskia's thread for it's original purpose.

If the group buy hasn't happened yet, could I be added also? Thank you.

[EclecticCollector]

For any Maruzen/Athena inks, I am encouraging people to go with Atsu, because when all other vendors could not get information on what inks were available, Atsu went to the store in person and took pictures and then made me a pdf collage, so I could choose which colours I wanted.

Saskia, have you made this pdf available anywhere? If not, would you be willing to do so? Thanks for all your great reviews!

[Sinistral1]

Sorry to say, there is no group buy being planned anymore. None of the shops/stores who sell the exclusive Sailor inks will ship overseas, and I would guess that Atsu would not be in the business of doing a group purchase for less than he charges for a single bottle. There are FPN members who live in various cities in Japan, but their cost comes close to Atsu's if they literally don't live near one of the shops who sell a specific ink. Until they change their policy and will ship internationally, any group buy is only a dream.

[saskia_madding]

Sorry EC, but Atsu specifically asked me not to. If you go to the thread listing all the Sailor inks, somewhere in there is something similar to what Atsu sent me, and it shows almost all the Maruzen inks.

[EclecticCollector]

That's too bad about both the group buy as well as the pdf. Oh well!

 

Just FYI BungBox at least will ship to the US, last month there was a group buy organized on reddit that came out to $30/bottle shipped (final cost inclusive of US re-shipping).

[saskia_madding]

Wow. Inclusive of US re-shipping? That's pretty great!

 

I just paid $93 USD for 4 bottles of KN ink, and that doesn't include shipping to Canada.

[Tessy Moon]

I was wondering if anyone might know if there is a way to get those bottles bungbox uses? They are so pretty! I don't want to spend $30 on one of their inks right now (although L'Amant does look pretty, it appears almost the same as Diamine Majestic Purple, imo).

But I would love to get my hands on an empty bottle!