And finally (for the day): A random collection of watches. @ Yokosuka Mike, this one's for you because of the Orient Star (making a repeat appearance)
Left to Right:
Orient Star: automatic Orient movement. Supburbly made in Japan and a bit of a stealth brand in the US.
Kuoe: Direct to customer Japan retail: Love the styling on this one. It is a pretty good reproduction of a WWII military watch, 38mm face (not like most of today's honking huge watches), Miyota automatic movement, classy, but understated. I like what this company is doing. Feels like there might be one person doing the design, if you know what I mean. The thing is perfectly proportioned. If I lived in Japan, I'd see whether I could seek one of these out. I prefer their automatic watches to the battery operated ones, but that's just me.
Seiko: Alpinist. Kind of to Seikos what the M3 is to cameras, in my opinion, anyway. But modern manufacture. Automatic with a Seiko SARB017 movement.
Watham: A brand from the golden age of American manufacture, you know, when we still made stuff in the good ol' USA. Waltham was one of many New England based American watch companies that did not survive the Quartz revolution of the 1970's. After Seiko could produce a watch with 10x the day-to-day accuracy of any mechanical spring driven watch (even the best Swiss stuff) at a fraction of the cost, the entire American watch industry went into a bit of a tailspin, from which it never really recovered. In a mechanical watch, I think the best value today is from Japanese companies, but that's another story. Cleaned up, the Waltham runs as well as it ever did, and you get that mid-centry styling that I think is so great.
Spinnaker: One of the most copied watches of all time is the Seiko SKX007, which is a classic chrome and black dive watch (now discontinued, of course). The things were bomb-proof and reasonably affordable. An entire cottage industry emerged just for folks who wanted to copy or modify the good ol' SKX007 in various ways. Folks replaced the dials, the hands, the rotating bezels, the crowns, swapped the crystals for more durable sapphire and so on. Eventually there were so many aftermarket parts that companies like Spinnaker, Island Watch etc. began producing entire copies of the design, but with the most common upgrades already built in. The Spinnaker shown here is just such a watch. Sapphire crystal and bezel, Mercedes style hands, deep yellow indexes on the face. All built around a Seiko R435 movement -- which you can hand-wind, and which hacks, compared to the SKX007 movement the 7S26, which doesn't have these features.
Am I Nuts? Absolutely. There is certainly as much to know about watches as there is about cameras. . . . and for all the detail above, I am but a mere sprout compared to "watch guys" who get deeply, deeply into these details. But do I have a problem? Clearly.
View attachment 4824991
All pics: Leica M9 and a 50/2.8 on a tripod. Mostly at f:16 due to the need for depth in photographs with both cameras and watches.
