My fake Rolex would look so good with this lens…

Ororaro

Ororaro

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I can visualize it: I’m walking down a street in Japan, lotsa faces swooshing next to me.
Faces, faces, and yet more faces.

I slowly lift my camera upon my face. I am proudly wearing a Rolex submariner. It’s a fake one, but really well made. I like to know that it is accurate at least twice in a day. Maybe more. My face slowly disappears behind my camera, even the Fake Rolex vanishes behind the flashy’n’classy Artizlab Classic 35mm f1.4 for M lens.

I depress the camera’s shutter; Bam masterpiece shot of random faces.

I feel so unique. Rich experience.
I become a FUNLEADER man.

I’m trying to decide where to place Artizlab on the scale of Legendary lenses. Above LLL? Under LLL? Above Leica? How many notches above?
I secretly start daydreaming about how, one day, these Artizlenses will become collectible and appreciate. Should I buy four samples and bury them next to my half-dozen fake Rolexes, under the bed?
 
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Roles watches are not known for being highly accurate, -2/+6 minutes per month is tolerable according to their specs. My €100 Pulsar on the other hand is very accurate. If the right tool gives me the expected result, I am happy. whatever the brand name is.
 
I’m okay with a watch being accurate twice a day… as long as the fake looks like an Original Rolex, I’m very satisfied.
 
When I first saw this SIMILAR 'Steel Rim' - Leica M 35mm f/1.4 lens, I know this Orarora lens will make someone scream. True enuf 🤣
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(Btw I hate it, really !!)
 
maddoc said:
Roles watches are not known for being highly accurate, -2/+6 minutes per month is tolerable according to their specs. My €100 Pulsar on the other hand is very accurate. If the right tool gives me the expected result, I am happy. whatever the brand name is.
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My $15 Casio only gains 6 seconds a month.
 
Nowadays you have to be careful which rabbit hole you are willing to pursue on social media. A few months ago I decided to spend two days doomscrolling on conspiracy theories videos leaving me with a permanent disability.

Sounds like you came across some sort of flashy review of a lens where the reviewer was trying to exude their status. I watched a video online about an Canon Autoboy review that all pictures missed focus. Conclusion: great camera.
 
I bought my first 35 when my kids were small and I needed wider than 50. Only years later did I learn the v4 Summicron had some reputation. After leaving my one automatic for service, an Oris Classic, I went next door to pick up a cheap second hand Rolex. I hated all of them, anll ugly, and noticed they were over-priced too. I bought an Oris 65 instead. Accurate enough. When I turned 60 my family gave me a Tudor Black Bay, a less showy Rolex ancestor brand. Chronometer. Loses only a few seconds per week. I don’t like rabbit holes. Can break an ankle.
 
I wear Seiko Chronographs. Two are 40+ years old. I sent them to Seiko for a full rebuild, turn-around time was about a month. Seiko still stocks replacement parts for most of their watches. The newest Seiko- a Solar Powered Chronograph, my wife bought it for me as a retirement present. Yup, wanted a watch for retiring after 45 years. Fooled her, and 2 months- "I Unretired".

Some of these new Chinese lenses are knock-offs, others are original design. The knock-offs are made intentionally to look like Leica lenses, and cost double what the companies that design and sell original formula lenses. I've bought several of the original optical formula lenses. The 50/1.1 7Art lens is similar to the 5cm F1.1v2 Zunow, but does away with a filler element by using modern multi-coated optics. This is what Zeiss did for the C-Sonnar 50/1.5, does not use the filler glass in the middle triplet of the classic Sonnar. The TTart 50/0.95 is an original design. I mostly use it on the M Monochrom. No one mistakes it for my Canon 50/0.95. That Canon cost me $200 some 20 years ago, the TTart was $550 from Popflash. It is the limited edition version using 62mm filters/hoods- so less blockage. The Canon cost more than $200 these days.

7Artisans did not make the 50/1.1 to look just like a Zunow 5cm F1.1 in Leica mount. No one will be fooled. But it would be cool for someone to come up and ask "Hey! isn't that the Chinese lens that's like the v2 Zunow 5cm F1.1 except they did not use filler glass!!! Fastest Sonnar Ever!!!"
 
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No mechanical watch will be as accurate as a quartz watch, but those with good movements can be regulated to be pretty close even if they didn't come from the factory that way.

timegrapher3.jpg

This Russian watch, a Vostok Amphibia, doesn't have a great movement. I've got it here to perfect accuracy (Rate: 0 seconds per day error), but it is only that accurate when the watch is held as shown in the photo, with the crown (winding knob) down. It has really bad 'positional variance,' meaning that in other positions, the watch runs at a different rate. Most mechanical watches have some positional variance, but Swiss and Japanese watches typically have far less than these Russian watches do.


relax-submariner-1.jpg

This is the most awesome fake Rolex Submariner ever made. Read the dial: "RELAX. Its not what you think." hahaha Its actually a pretty good watch; it has a Seiko automatic movement. It loses about 2 seconds per day. Someday I'll take the back off and I'll adjust it.
 
Richard G said:
I bought my first 35 when my kids were small and I needed wider than 50. Only years later did I learn the v4 Summicron had some reputation. After leaving my one automatic for service, an Oris Classic, I went next door to pick up a cheap second hand Rolex. I hated all of them, anll ugly, and noticed they were over-priced too. I bought an Oris 65 instead. Accurate enough. When I turned 60 my family gave me a Tudor Black Bay, a less showy Rolex ancestor brand. Chronometer. Loses only a few seconds per week. I don’t like rabbit holes. Can break an ankle.
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I have one of them babies. From a pawn shop in Sydney (Australia), acquired in 1985 for AUD $75. It keeps almost perfect time - if I don't count seconds, maybe - but it also has an odd quirk of seizing up every few years, which means a service is required. So far I've spent ten times or more the original price of that watch, but gee whiz, it's a Rolex, if a poor man's one.

I had a near mint 1950s Rolex Oyster left to me in his will by a close friend. It disappeared from my house along with other valuables (thankfully no photo gear or I would have been up for a double homicide) after friends of a friend came to stay for a weekend. The latter paid me the cost of a new watch. Unknown to me, my then SO had our place insured to the roof rafters, at a time when good home insurance was affordable, and included the Rolex in our claim, which the insurer PIF. So I had a small mound of cash to play with, and being me I did what every Sagittarius would have - I bought a Leica M2 and two Leitz lenses, this again being a time when quality used cameras sold for decent prices.

The M2 and those lenses got used for a few years, but my business then went through a rough patch and 'I sold a lot of my good photo gear to cover essentials like office rent and part-time staff.

I do miss that camera, not so much the watch. I have a TAG 2000, an original Levis 1990s wrist breaker, three or four circa 1970s Swiss watches, a drawer full of old watches acquired for almost nothing from charity shops, and a 1910s or 1920s square gentleman's watch my SO is convinced is made from solid platinum (which I doubt). All except the last one keep better time than that Oyster did.

My Rolex Tudor has sort of filled the gap for me, even if just now it's back for servicing for the sixth or seventh time. In such a strange world do we old watch aficionados live...
 
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I went through a phase of watch collecting - in the last 2 years I ended up with 20 watches. Cyma, Seiko, Roamer, Enicar, Certina... you name it. Also had plain Rotaries and Accurists.

I sold them all.

I just kept this gold 1954 Rotary Maximus with a beautiful gold plated Revue 77 movement that never leaves my hand. It is as accurate as I want a watch to be.

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Lens/camera wise - I have the good old itch for a Contax, a Hexar AF or a Nikon Ti compact but I am not going to do anything about it.
 
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Beautiful Pan. I have my grandfather’s CYMA, a post war elegant small plain watch. It keeps very good time. I try not to ‘collect’ anything. My son has a collection of watches. I have three automatics. That’s already too many. The Oris 65 is my hard work/sport watch. The Tudor is really too big. Adjusting the date on a watch I don’t wear all the time is annoying. I’m recovering from an operation and very inactive and my automatics keep stopping, on my wrist. I’ve been wearing the cyma.

Looks like you’ve cured the collecting bug.
 
Richard G said:
Looks like you’ve cured the collecting bug.
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Yes indeed, the watch that got me into collecting actually displaced all others. It was a charity shop find for a tenner.

IMG_20240918_091642_(850_x_638_pixel).jpg

Oris, Tudor ... What can I say, great watches. With time I found that I prefer hand wound movements- smaller, thinner, lighter. I sleep with my watch on.

Cyma is such a great company. Your grandfather must have paid a lot of money back then, they were never cheap.
 
Chriscrawfordphoto said:
No mechanical watch will be as accurate as a quartz watch, but those with good movements can be regulated to be pretty close even if they didn't come from the factory that way.

View attachment 4854471

This Russian watch, a Vostok Amphibia, doesn't have a great movement. I've got it here to perfect accuracy (Rate: 0 seconds per day error), but it is only that accurate when the watch is held as shown in the photo, with the crown (winding knob) down. It has really bad 'positional variance,' meaning that in other positions, the watch runs at a different rate. Most mechanical watches have some positional variance, but Swiss and Japanese watches typically have far less than these Russian watches do.


View attachment 4854472

This is the most awesome fake Rolex Submariner ever made. Read the dial: "RELAX. Its not what you think." hahaha Its actually a pretty good watch; it has a Seiko automatic movement. It loses about 2 seconds per day. Someday I'll take the back off and I'll adjust it.
Click to expand...
I have an Amphibia with plain dial (no frogman). Pretty accurate for a mechanical watch. The crown is worryingly wobbly but apparently designed that way.
 
Zuiko-logist said:
I have an Amphibia with plain dial (no frogman). Pretty accurate for a mechanical watch. The crown is worryingly wobbly but apparently designed that way.
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Vostok's are suposed to have the wobbly crown, it makes it harder to accidentally damage the stem. As to accuracy, every Vostok I have put on the timegrapher had pretty serious positional variance, with the worst having a difference of 55 seconds between the slowest position and the fastest. All of them ran too fast before I regulated them. Most of them can be regulated to be quite accurate though.
 
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