Mystic Waters?

Best of luck, Andrew and you should try to find a scent that you enjoy.  

So speaketh the enabler!

Oh we'll never mind, thanks for the clarity Mystic Water

I will just have to find a friend to ship some to me

Here's my lowly Omega chunky chub boar giving me some great MW lather

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I have noticed a lot of concern about how to lather Mystic. Maybe I can help some although I know others are successful. I’ll try to give back. Warning – picture intensive.

I’ve tried over 150 soaps now and one thing I find consistent is that there seems to be a difference between thick luxury lathers and then there is a second tier which are more airy and a third tier which is worse. But what do they really look like?

You know how these feel on your face, the dense lathers are, well dense and cushioning. But some soaps lather into huge mounds of whipped cream just by looking at them, but are more air than anything else and dry quickly. So lets look closely. These pictures are taken with a 7 year old Crop DSLR and a Macro lens. This means they are not state of the art, top of the line full frame DSLR shots with a 2015 camera. They are also not staged. You know the fancy staged shots with a beautiful background and color coordinated matching aftershave, etc.? Not here, these are quick snaps on the fly. First to lather Mystic.

I wanted to use an off white example soap, in this case Irish Traveller. A BIG problem with seeing lathers on the internet is that the shots can be blown out and the viewer never know it. This means there is no detail in the whites.  Something might look beautiful and rich but in reality, there is just no detail because everything is pure white. These shots will show macro level detail at the end.  If I messed it up, well, then I messed it up.

1. First I smear a soap sample on the bottom of one of Michelle’s empty tubs



2. Step two, not shown, is that I have a Edwin Jagger Best Badger 21mm (tiny knot) brush. It’s a common, under $50 brush, easily obtained on Amazon. It is not dense. This is no chubby. I soak JUST THE TOP HALF in warm water. Many times you see people dunking the entire brush in water. Nope, just the top tips. I never dunk the whole thing in water.

3. I pour warm water on top of the soap. Let it sit a minute or so while the brush is soaking. When done I dump MOST of the water out.



4. I then do NOT shake the brush but gently squeeze out the water and start loading it. It looks like this. I load maybe 15 seconds. This means the brush and soap are NOT dripping wet but sort of dry.




5. I move over to a bowl, with a FEW drops of water on the bottom and then whip it up. I don’t always go in the same direction. Sometimes it counterclockwise then counterclockwise. This is sort of like the proto-lather. Note the bubbles are easily visible.




6. I then go back to the soap, load a little more, back to the bowl, whip it up a little more, and if it needs water, just DRIBBLE some in while stirring. We are talking tiny amounts of water. its sort of play it by ear, adjusting on the fly.

Now here is the classic money shot usually taken at a distance. Kind of messy, but reality. It’s not overflowing in lather. But it’s all that is needed. If you try this with a Chubby, I see far less lather because its all in the bristles. It doesn't look like a lot of lather, but its plenty.



Kind of looks rich to me. But is it really? Lets look much, much closer.

7. Actually yes, its pretty rich looking. This is from the top down about an inch away



and this is in the bowl, very close



OK, now lets move on to Brand X, another soft artisan soap. Brand X costs slightly more than Mystic. I find its lather to explode. You about look at this and POOF.  No names, no need to go into that. This isn't about name. I picked it for the color to try to match. I found this soap to be more airy, more drying, and not as luxurious. I used the EXACT same process. Both are tallow.

1. In the bowl waiting to be lathered



2. Now I got tired because this is tedious so lets jump to the money shot. It sure looks like more lather, a big white blob.



3. But is it the same? Lets look closer. What do you think?







I see a lot more bubbles.  But wait, there is an easy way to see far better. Lets crank up the contrast. The following are the EXACT same shots from above. The only thing I did was extract detail.  First, Mystic







and now brand X








Make of it what you will. I can see the difference.


But there is a lesson here. "IN GENERAL", I would never trust lather shots on the internet to truly tell you how a lather looks unless  you know the full details of what is going on. You don't know if the colors are calibrated (which is a big deal to photographers), resolution, and important for white lather is blown out highlights. If something white, its very easy to  be pure white and have no detail

BTW, I am not saying any shots in this or other threads have this problem, I'm just making a general statement about photography.

I hope this helps someone.

Fantastic post grim! You really highlight the role of photography in our impressions of lather.

Good post, I like the demonstration!

Great job, grim , with the photos and the explanations are just icing on the cake (or is that lather on the brush?!!) Well done!

One of the many projects on my back burner!  There is a prototype in the making, I have some red tape to get through to be able to sell products that contain alcohol.  Those who have tried it have liked it very much though.

I'm guessing I'm going to be spending some more money in the future. You're just teasing us now, Michelle!

As an unrelated side note, I find it funny that people still to this day put "WARNING - Picture heavy" when their post contains a lot of pictures. Welcome to 2016, nobody's on 56k anymore!

As an unrelated side note, I find it funny that people still to this day "WARNING - Picture heavy" when their post contains a lot of pictures. Welcome to 2016, nobody's on 56k anymore!

That should tell you how old I am