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Wrist Check

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I just got this yesterday, an Orient Star Retro Future Camera Model. A drop here on Massdrop led me down a rabbit hole that led to my getting this on an auction website. Massdrop has had drops for a watch called the Orient Eclipse Automatic at least a couple of times. The Eclipse stuck me as the weirdest watch: an open heart window that does not appear to show the balance wheel plus a random "date window" with no date. Why does this thing exist?

After some research I came to the conclusion that it might be some sort of spin-off of an Orient Star series of watches from circa 2005-2015 that riffed on the theme of "retrofuturism," which is a thing, vd. Wikipedia. The watches in the series were quite wacky, and eventually the camera model grew on me, inspired by 1950s German Leica and Zeiss camera lenses, complete with bezel seconds presented as faux f-stop numbers and an aperture blade pattern embossed on the face.

The watch is a diver of sorts, in that the bezel rotates (counterlockwise, 60 ticks) and it's rated for 100 m, but the crown is not screw down, so I'm not sure I'd want to test it in the water. The open heart on the camera watch does show the balance wheel, and there are two non-date date windows, whose purpose is to show the rotation of the stem and the gear it engages when you hand wind (automatic, hacking, hand windable), as well as a narrow circular band around the face open to the innerds. There is an exhibition back, the glass of which is curved cyllindrically to match your arm, as is the entire watch back. The hands look black with lume in the middle, but the "black" glows a brilliant emerald blue if hit by the light at a particular angle. The complications are a retrograde power reserve indicator and the seconds.

I put it on a Radon NATO because the bracelet was too small for me. There were several colorways of this watch, and I plan to get a black version, at which point I can combine the links to build one full bracelet to use on my not-that-big wrist (Japanese wrists are small).


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WatchDoctor
847
Oct 26, 2017
Wow. Very unique.
Asheikm
2537
Oct 25, 2017
Very cool watch! The asymmetric crown guard is interesting.
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