EFNIR: Pilot Mixable Colour Light-green

[LizEF]

Extra Fine Nib Ink Review: Pilot Mixable Colour Light-green

This is review #279 in my series. Here's the YouTube video:

Post-recording notes: As mentioned with previous inks in this series, I'm taking them out of order because they're starting to evaporate out of the cartridge. I added a few drops of distilled water to top the cartridge off. I don't believe this has had a significant impact on color or performance.

This is a bright, happy, Spring green that leans heavily yellow.  It's a little brighter when wet, more muted when dry.  It's a little better behaved than the others I've tested in this line. Shading seems to depend on paper.  On the front side of Rhodia (not the side I reviewed on), this ink dried in roughly 1.5 minutes.

Cleaning was quick and easy.  The remaining ink went into a Prera with a CM (stub) nib without any dilution (didn't want to dilute what lubrication it had).

Zoomed in photo (Very close.  Perhaps the closest match.)

Screenshot (Text is a little too dark and muted.)

Scan of Completed Review (The green is a little muted, especially in the smear which is much brighter and very yellow-green in real life.  On my monitor, that smear looks brownish, but there's no brownish on the page.)

Absorbent Paper Close-up (top is puzzle paper like thick newsprint, bottom is old 20lb copy paper) (They're not too far off.)

Line width (The "I" in "Ink:". Magnification is 100x. The grid is 100x100µm. The scale is 360µm, with twelve divisions of 30µm each. The line width for this ink is roughly 343µm. With 279 inks measured, the average line width is 296µm.)

Microscope image (100x. Colors were a bit brighter / more vibrant in reality, but this is close. 'Twas dull except for these yellow-orange spikes at the edges of the slip cover (which edge you see at the top, right of the image).)

Previous Review: Rohrer & Klingner Königsblau.

Images also available on Instagram: @zilxodarap.

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View a list of my inks, complete with review results in a google sheet.

Need to catch up on The Adventures of Quin and Makhabesh? Find the whole story here.

Hope you enjoy. Comments appreciated!

[Sailor Kenshin]

A blast of orange sun-rays spiked the green sea, only just missing the tiny whale-shaped island floating to its off-side….

I love spring greens. Such bright, happy colors! And shading, too? Hold me back!  But given the Eternal Dry Time, and the fact that I already have Diamine Meadow…

Nevertheless, @LizEF, THANK YOU once again for the Triple Tuesday Treat of review, micro, and story.  Can hardly wait for the next installment.  💝

[yazeh]

Green squirrel? 

 

Thanks for a fun review of an ink I would never bother to review @LizEF 

Was the dry time shorter on the front of the page? 

 

Thanks for making Tuesdays so much fun

 

 

[LizEF]

8 minutes ago, Sailor Kenshin said:

A blast of orange sun-rays spiked the green sea, only just missing the tiny whale-shaped island floating to its off-side….

 

8 minutes ago, Sailor Kenshin said:

I love spring greens. Such bright, happy colors! And shading, too? Hold me back!  But given the Eternal Dry Time, and the fact that I already have Diamine Meadow…

  Saved by redundancy!

 

8 minutes ago, Sailor Kenshin said:

Nevertheless, @LizEF, THANK YOU once again for the Triple Tuesday Treat of review, micro, and story.  Can hardly wait for the next installment.  💝

You're most welcome!

[LizEF]

Just now, yazeh said:

Green squirrel? 

  Inspired by your review of the ink by that name.

 

2 minutes ago, yazeh said:

Thanks for a fun review of an ink I would never bother to review @LizEF 

You're very welcome!

 

3 minutes ago, yazeh said:

Was the dry time shorter on the front of the page? 

Yes - in testing, it took about 1.5 minutes on the front.

 

7 minutes ago, yazeh said:

Thanks for making Tuesdays so much fun

Gladly!

[knarflj]

I love the sunburst microscope image, and the story.  But you have me wondering about my priorities, when despite a lengthy to-do list I sit here reading ink reviews...

[inkstainedruth]

As opposed to me who spent a couple of hours out of my life I'll never get back trying to get a straight answer from Amodex about being able to order JUST one of their little brushes....  Not to mention the fact that I first contacted them OVER TWO WEEKS AGO....

The sad part is that the shipping costs more than the brush itself does (and I'm not 100% sure that I told the guy on the phone that I wanted more than one).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[LizEF]

37 minutes ago, knarflj said:

I love the sunburst microscope image, and the story.

Thank you.

 

37 minutes ago, knarflj said:

But you have me wondering about my priorities, when despite a lengthy to-do list I sit here reading ink reviews...

Thank you very much!  Just think, without ink reviews, we wouldn't know which ink to use to write up our to-do lists.

[LizEF]

28 minutes ago, inkstainedruth said:

...spent a couple of hours out of my life I'll never get back...

Isn't this the whole reason 1-800 numbers exist?  (Hope you're able to recover some time somewhere, somehow...)

[inkstainedruth]

Except trying to get the 800 number out of the chick on the chat window on their FB page was like trying to pry nails out of concrete with a pair of eyebrow tweezers.  And I don't know whether it was at their end, or Yet Another™ Epic IT Fail on FB's part, but apparently she couldn't even access the original part of the conversation from 2 weeks ago.... 

It probably didn't help that I gotten woken up by a thunderstorm right about the same time as the alarm went off.  Normally, we have them around here in the late afternoon/evening.  And while it wasn't super close, like the one early in the evening on Saturday when we were leaving something we'd gone to at a college down in California, PA, having one at 8:30 AM is pretty unusual for around here.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[InesF]

Thank you, @LizEF, for the ink review, for thew story, for the microscope image and for introducing the green killer spy squirrel that inspired @yazeh to post episode 1 of the new wizard series!    

 

For most of my pen and ink time I hated pale inks like this spring green. It all changed with discovery of first R&K Alt-Goldgrün and later Diamine Kelly Green (and Meadow). However, one spring green is enough in my collection.  

 

PS: on todays way home I will buy lots of popcorn and chips ... looking forward to the next episodes of both, the story and the movie adaptation 👍😄

 

[LizEF]

5 hours ago, InesF said:

Thank you, @LizEF, for the ink review, for thew story, for the microscope image and for introducing the green killer spy squirrel that inspired @yazeh to post episode 1 of the new wizard series!    

You're most welcome!

 

5 hours ago, InesF said:

killer spy squirrel

(After following the link:) I can't even...

 

5 hours ago, InesF said:

For most of my pen and ink time I hated pale inks like this spring green. It all changed with discovery of first R&K Alt-Goldgrün and later Diamine Kelly Green (and Meadow). However, one spring green is enough in my collection.  

Inks can reveal surprising things in oneself!  I would never ever have suspected I love murky greens!  I agree, though, one bottle of spring green is enough.  (Unlike blue-black, where you need at least 3 different variations.  Probably more. )

 

5 hours ago, InesF said:

PS: on todays way home I will buy lots of popcorn and chips ... looking forward to the next episodes of both, the story...

Thank you!

 

5 hours ago, InesF said:

...and the movie adaptation 👍😄

[yazeh]

22 hours ago, LizEF said:

  Inspired by your review of the ink by that name.

 

22 hours ago, LizEF said:

Yes - in testing, it took about 1.5 minutes on the front.

🙏

[AceNinja]

On 4/2/2024 at 9:47 PM, LizEF said:

Line width (The "I" in "Ink:". Magnification is 100x. The grid is 100x100µm. The scale is 360µm, with twelve divisions of 30µm each. The line width for this ink is roughly 343µm. With 279 inks measured, the average line width is 296µm.)

Microscope image (100x. Colors were a bit brighter / more vibrant in reality, but this is close. 'Twas dull except for these yellow-orange spikes at the edges of the slip cover (which edge you see at the top, right of the image).)

 

 

I suddenly have a question (but not ink related).  With the microscope equipment that you have, can you take a photo of your nib's writing surface?  It gotta be better than my loupe!  I wonder what it will look like under that kind of magnification.

 

Maybe you take one photo today, then take one photo after a year, and a year after that, out of the same extra fine nib that you used for your EFNIR series.

 

It's just an idea popping into my mind.

[LizEF]

1 hour ago, AceNinja said:

I suddenly have a question (but not ink related).  With the microscope equipment that you have, can you take a photo of your nib's writing surface?  It gotta be better than my loupe!  I wonder what it will look like under that kind of magnification.

 

Maybe you take one photo today, then take one photo after a year, and a year after that, out of the same extra fine nib that you used for your EFNIR series.

 

It's just an idea popping into my mind.

The microscope that made these images wouldn't work well for taking a picture of the nib - a 3 dimensional object - the depth of field is far too shallow.  Something like the tipscope (a super-macro lens for camera phones), an electron microscope (a wee bit out of my price range), and even my USB microscope that I use for the "zoom" and "absorbent paper" images would work better.

 

I like the general idea.  The difficulty with doing this for comparing the nib over time is that in order for it to be meaningful, I would have to have some way to repeatedly and reliably get the nib into a very precise position, otherwise you couldn't be sure of any change (nib change, or distance from the lens, or the angle of rotation, or...?).  Right now, the fact that I still occasionally get lines that are considerably below the average line width convinces me that my nib hasn't changed that much since I started.  Also, the line widths are not generally surprising - dry inks still have narrower lines, wet inks still have wider lines, etc.

 

FWIW.

[knarflj]

On 4/2/2024 at 4:26 PM, LizEF said:

Just think, without ink reviews, we wouldn't know which ink to use to write up our to-do lists.

 

[namrehsnoom]

Thanks for the review @LizEF - I need me some spring colour in my life at this time. Looks a nice yellow-green to me, but not special enough to put it on the wish list. 

 

On the other hand, this review makes me decide to put some green inks in my pens, and experience that spring feeling for myself. 

[LizEF]

7 minutes ago, namrehsnoom said:

Thanks for the review @LizEF 

You're very welcome!

 

7 minutes ago, namrehsnoom said:

I need me some spring colour in my life at this time. Looks a nice yellow-green to me, but not special enough to put it on the wish list. 

Don't we all - it's that time of year!  I'm afraid I agree, though - Caran d'Ache Delicate Green or Robert Oster Green Lime are my choice for this bright spring green.  And there are plenty of others, should one want a slightly different hue...

 

9 minutes ago, namrehsnoom said:

On the other hand, this review makes me decide to put some green inks in my pens, and experience that spring feeling for myself. 

  Hope you enjoy!  Tell us what green you chose!