Episode 27 - Complications

Published on Wed, 01 May 2019 23:22:00 -0700

Synopsis

This podcast episode covers a wide range of topics related to watches and hobbies. The hosts, Andrew and Everett, discuss various watch complications such as date, chronograph, dual time, and minute repeater. They explore the evolving definition of complications with the advent of smartwatches. Andrew also shares his newfound interest in film photography and his experience with a vintage Pentax K1000 camera.

Transcript

Speaker
Everett Hello fellow watch lovers, nerds, enthusiasts, or however you identify. This is the 40 in 20 podcast with your hosts, Andrew and my good friend Everett. Here, we talk about watches, food, drinks, life, and other things we like. Everett, how are you?
Andrew Man, I'm good. I love, I love when the sun starts setting later.
Everett Well, when the sun's out. I'm in shorts today. For the first time in Oregon.
Andrew I did notice you were in shorts. Months. What feels like forever. You got nice legs. I do.
Everett I'm wearing shorts too. Yeah, but you ran. That's true. I just wore shorts because it's kind of hot. And I mowed my lawn. Oh yeah, that's a good shorts activity. No, after I got home from work, I mowed my lawn in pants because I mow my lawn in pants because there's dog poop and other debris. Rocks. Yeah, who knows what that makes it in the lawn that I don't want to hit me in the shins. But then I was hot, so I put shorts on and I left them on and it has been delightful. I'm in shorts and a t-shirt.
Andrew It's so nice and it's still sunny. We're recording, what, eight o'clock and it's still totally light outside.
Everett And almost 70 degrees.
Andrew Wonderful. Wonderful. Thank you, Oregon, for being you. I love this place, man. For this week. For this. Until next week when it rains. All damn week. I took Betty out to do some pictures. Gosh, was that Tuesday morning. We went out six o'clock. We got to the park and the sun's coming out and I was like, this is so nice. I will say. It was not shorts weather.
Everett No, it's in like the 40s in the morning still.
Andrew It was cold and both of our hands were getting cold. But the light was beautiful. It was just a crisp, sunny morning. And, you know, the park we went to has these like trails where if you're in, you know, I'm sure those pictures are going to look like we're in the middle of nowhere.
Everett And you've got good dew on the ground reflecting light and looking real shiny. That's right. Those are going to look cool.
Andrew Yeah. So I'm pumped about them. I don't have any clue what they look like. Yet. Which is all super weird. We just got to build your darkroom.
Everett Super weird.
Andrew So how are you, man?
Everett Good. Work's going well. You know, it's rare that you go into a job and go into your training and onboarding and everything turns out the way that you hope. Right. You don't get that weird slap in the mouth like, what have I done? And I haven't had that yet. I expect it'll come eventually because that always seems to happen, but hasn't happened yet. So I'm good with it. I'm just going to keep plugging away.
Andrew nice yeah so you've started then this week or last week last week started week and a half in just doing you know the normal onboarding and training stuff and getting to know the group of people that i'm working around for ever i guess i don't know like for a while yeah right right this is your this is your cohort time huh learning the difference between reckless and negligent i assume it's an important distinction it is an important distinction which most people don't know most people think reckless negligent they mean the same thing but they don't no No, there's two types of people that know the difference and one of them's you and one of them's me. What a team. We know the difference, you people. Well, great. Great. Yeah. Anything else new with you?
Everett I mean, besides Game of Thrones plugging away. Oh my gosh. And we can't, we're, we're still too early to do any spoiling. Oh my gosh. But holy cannoli. Y'all, if you're, if you're waiting, stop. Oh my gosh. And just, just tune in.
Andrew You know, there's been some criticisms of episode 3. It is always criticisms, right? Everybody's always got something to say, but I loved it.
Everett I did too. And here's the criticisms. I think they're valid. But what we've done is we've hyped this up and we put the show on such a pedestal that people somehow have in their mind that they're not going to be mildly to moderately disappointed at the conclusion. Yeah. And that's just the reality. We're going to be disappointed. And then when we look back on it, We're still gonna be excited. Like season nine of The Office, I hated. And now I go back and I watch it and I'm like, okay, I can deal with you. It's just, that's the way it is. When you hype something up like that, it's not going to live up to the expectation that you want because you have all these fan theories in your head. And as long as they're exercising their artistic license, it's not going to match what you wanted. So stop, stop bitching. It was a terrific episode. The season has been great so far, and it's probably going to be Idle Go Down is probably one of the best television shows in history.
Andrew Yeah, no, I think that's right. And it's certainly one of the most popular. But it's been it's just phenomenal. You know, when The Sopranos ended, I was not watching it. I mean, I wasn't into The Sopranos until until later. And you know, that ending is controversial. The Sopranos ending, it just fade to black, basically.
Everett Have we talked about that on here before?
Andrew I'm not sure we have talked about it. Yeah. I don't know just go to black and and you don't you don't know and it's it's beautiful it's beautiful it it was uh the end of uh true detective season three was really reminiscent of of uh the sopranos ending yeah just ambiguous at best yeah yeah you know i i think that that that true detective series uh does some of the same stuff with with the way they they sort of end Uh characters or you know, you don't end the character, but you know what I mean the way the way they tie up characters Uh, you you know, we're in this sort of golden age of tv or maybe maybe just past the golden age You know, maybe we just came through one.
Everett I think we're on the back end of it I want we talked about that show the 2000s that I was watching the first couple episodes were all related to uh to the golden age of television and media and they all Began with you know the sopranos and with the wire And with all these, with HBO taking on programming as opposed to movies and boxing, um, and that kind of sparked this. Other networks coming out and coming, uh, coming up and creating original content, you know, whether it be, uh, sons of anarchy or, uh, shoot, what else happened at that time? I mean, the wire happened, uh, AMC started, started developing content. I mean, we're, we're kind of on the backend of the peak of television and I I don't know how it's going to get better, but yeah, I hope it does.
Andrew Well, you know, I think the nice thing is you have so many different companies creating content, but it does seem like there's a bottom line that is a bottom line that's cutting in to the new programs we're getting more than it was four and five years ago. You know, Breaking Bad, such a beautiful, beautiful series. The whole thing is just really excellent. I don't know that I don't know that that You know, I don't know that that theme is something that would be marketable right now. Oh, it certainly wouldn't be. Yeah. Well, and who knows, right? I'm no expert, but it seems like that show, if it came out right now, would struggle. And that's too bad. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm wrong.
Everett No, I think you're right. I think it would struggle. I think because we're kind of, we're not necessarily a downtick, but we're in the, Meth isn't so much a novelty that hasn't touched people anymore. It's like so permeated through our culture that you're going to be hard pressed to find somebody who hasn't had a direct interaction with it. So it's not like this, this fantastical world where this white collar dude just starts slinging drugs and this whole mess of violence follows. It's, it's kind of real. And people are, I think, a lot more sensitive to the the negative side of that. It's hard for anti-heroes to really gain traction these days.
Andrew Yeah, that might be true. You know, I don't know. Obviously, it's anecdotal, but I had experienced the pain of meth specifically in my life well before that, and it didn't affect the way I watched it. But maybe you're onto something there. So, well, watch this.
Everett What do we do here? I suppose we should. I mean, it's early. We still have plenty of time to just burn, but we can move into what could turn into a pretty long topic.
Andrew Yeah, you know, it's interesting because I usually feel like we have a pretty good idea when we get started of how the show's going to go. I have no clue how it's going to go today.
Everett Me either. We usually work in a silo, but we have, I think, a better framework, better rules set, if you will. Yeah. This was pretty open-ended.
Andrew Super open-ended. In fact, when I was preparing, I thought, am I supposed to be doing this?
Everett And we still worked in a silo, so we'll kind of see how it goes. And I personally broke away from
Andrew uh selecting watches yeah me too um but i i know that there's enough in here that we're going to be able to pretty quickly come up with good examples and i you know i do have one watch that i that i selected today because i imagine it's the same one i did oh really okay well we'll see you you know the the i don't think i don't think it is i would be i would be shocked okay uh i would be shocked uh you know one of these so just to get out with it today we're talking about watch complications and Um, that was sort of an interesting thing to talk about, even, even just, well, what do we mean by watch complications? And so I, I gather we're probably going to have fairly different ideas about, uh, what that means, how we're going to talk about it. I think that the way I did my research was to sort of, um, just sort of get a well-grounded sort of categorical knowledge of, you know, what are now, what are watch complications? What are the watch complications?
Everett um how they can affect us why some are special you know thinking about tourbillons or minute repeaters some of these words we we hear but don't really understand and they can be intimidating to folks who are just getting into watches yeah i mean a tourbillon never mind the fact that spelling it to look it up is going to be hard enough but then when you start to look into what a tourbillon is it it goes over it goes over your head pretty easily right and i think it's actually pronounced tourbillon oh tourbillion tourbillon That sounds better. I like that one.
Andrew Uh, okay. Well, uh, you know, I guess it's interesting because you, you name dropped a couple of complications when we, uh, we're, we're talking through it and I sort of went in a different direction, although I can talk about those complications. Uh, I sort of went with a classic approach to what, what are the complications? What's the, you know, perhaps the first complication, you know, what the most basic complications and then sort of moved along in complexity as we go. But where do you, how do you, how do you think you want to get started?
Everett I don't know. Cause I went a little bit different way. I went like, what are the bells and whistles that are out there? What do they mean? Do they, are they valuable to you? Are they just something to drive a price? Are they really a factor of increased craftsmanship or is it really just adding another window and a gear with a number plate on it. Is it truly increasing the value of your watch or is it just something that's cool? And then plenty of just cool complications that I mentioned and wrote down.
Andrew So I guess that's a good place to start. So what is a watch complication?
Everett A watch complication is anything. It's what's happening on the watch. Beyond time. I think even beyond hours and minutes. I think, I think once you add a second hand, I think that's where it becomes a complication beyond time telling.
Andrew Oh, that's an interesting thoughts. That's an interesting thought. And I don't know, I haven't thought about it before this second right now. So I don't know if it's it's something I agree with or not. Is that a is that a controversial opinion? Because I assume it is.
Everett Could it be? I mean, the small seconds seems like a pretty, pretty universally accepted complication. I air quoted for those of you who aren't sitting with me and Everett. But small seconds, I think, would be considered a complication, whether complex or not, is a complication, which then, to me, would mean that big seconds, so too would also be a complication.
Andrew Yeah, it's interesting because, you know, I assumed we'd talk about this later, but, you know, some folks argue that, for instance, a tourbillon is not a complication, that a tourbillon is a style of movement. So a tourbillon is essentially just a case, a cage, that goes around, I think, the balance spring, but ooh.
Everett That sounds right, but it might just sound right. Right.
Andrew But what it does is it sort of replicates the pendulum and counteracts gravity. It turns. It turns constantly, turns, so that no matter whether you're laying down or you're moving this cage around the balance spring, I'm hoping I'm crossing my fingers that I'm saying the right thing. I actually don't care. Uh, is, is constantly in rotation. So it counteracts gravity. Theoretically it would give you more accuracy, but is it a complication?
Everett Uh, I mean, I, I would think yes, because it's a feature added to the watch that isn't necessary for the keeping of time.
Andrew Well, Sure. I mean, there's lots of things in a watch that aren't necessary for the keeping of time. You know, if we talk about like, uh, what's Omega's, um, what's Omega's fancy movement there.
Everett Um, Oh, we just talked about it.
Andrew Uh, is the, uh, okay, well, whatever you guys know what it is. You're screaming at your radios. That's fine. Um, we're going to move on, but is that is Omega's sort of fancy escapement. Is that a complication? No, it's just a movement. That's fair. Yeah, and I think a tourbillon theoretically does the same thing. Now, you know, I think it's, it's important to know that it holds a different place in the world of watches, right? Because when I said earlier, theoretically, it's more accurate, it's certainly not more accurate.
Everett You know, the idea is that the only thing that affects the timekeeping are the mechanics of it, your positioning of it, there's not gonna be outside factors that affect as much the timekeeping ability of that watch.
Andrew But in reality, it's not really more accurate.
Everett No, you just go to courts.
Andrew It costs a billion dollars. Right. So I want a tourbillon. I better get out my checkbook.
Everett And actually, my checkbook's not going to work because what would it's just they can't check it or cash it before you're gone. And you're going to have to leave the country.
Andrew So, you know, it's interesting. So what is the complication? You know, maybe we'll just leave it at that. Seconds hand complication. Yes or no. Turbion complication yes or no. You know, I've not come across the seconds hand argument, although I did come across the Turbion argument. So it's interesting. I don't know what the answer is. Let us know what your thoughts are.
Everett The only reason I'm comfortable saying that seconds hand is a complication is because small seconds is considered a complication, which to me means then big seconds is also.
Andrew Well, yeah. No, I get it. I get what you're saying. I don't know that I agree with you. Actually, I probably tend to disagree with you, but, um, I'm picking up what you're putting down.
Everett But my premise is that anything that's not necessarily for keeping up time.
Unknown Yeah.
Andrew I'm picking up what you're putting down. Well, so maybe we start with the most basic of date complications, which is not to say the simplest. No. Yeah. But the most basic of... Common. Did I say date complication? I already let the cat out of the bag.
Everett The most common. The turkeys are distracting. I hope y'all can pick up the turkeys.
Andrew You know, we've got a troop of turkeys that lives in my neighborhood. They... Troop? Have we talked about... Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Is it a flock? I don't know what it is. Whatever. They're a troop. They stand around in a gaggle.
Everett Yeah, they block traffic. They jump on your car. They shot gobble when I close my door.
Andrew These things fly up and down these trees. We've got probably 150 foot fir trees across the way from my house. There's a forest across the street from my house. You live within a forest. Yeah, that's right. And these turkeys fly in and out of the trees. And they fly from, you know, probably about 50 foot up. They fly down from 50 foot up. They fall 50 foot up. They fly up. It is. It's not a graceful flight. No. Put it that way. They don't fly up. It's interesting. They, they do, uh, uh, wing assisted jumping is what they do. So they get to the lowest branch. They have to sort of get moving. They get to the lowest branch and then they, they jump up the tree. like uh i don't know some 1980s nintendo video game is what i'm picturing but i can't think of any right now it's very donkey kong through the trees something like that yeah yeah they they jump up the branches until they get where they're going and then if you go out and slam the car door they all go yeah it's called a shot gobble anything can do it anything will do it oh fascinating turkeys so the date complication yeah the most common the most not necessarily the most simple you're correct in that i think Yeah, and maybe not even the most common, because I think that there are other complications that are similarly common. You know, in the world of dive watches, right? A bezel is common. Would that be a complication? A dive bezel absolutely is a complication. A dive bezel is 100% a complication. In my mind. I don't even think it's arguable.
Everett Huh. We can continue. I'm going to mull that over.
Andrew and so it but i think it's maybe the most the most sort of basic maybe maybe even the most overlooked right oh yeah well does your watch have a date i don't know oh yeah look there it is um it has one you did look though we knew that one yeah uh so you know that that's interesting now now within that there's a bunch of different variations and it's more variation than you would think yeah at least more variation than i would
Everett And this is one of the complications that I would think is important and valuable, brings value and usefulness, maybe not necessarily value, but brings usefulness and functionality to your watch. Because a lot of these, there's a good chunk of these that don't necessarily bring functionality, they just bring form.
Andrew Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, you know, with the exception of maybe a chronograph, I'd argue that the date complication is the most useful complication. I don't think there'd be too many people that would aggressively argue against that.
Everett I mean, the minute repeater is pretty valuable. So anyway, we're still at the date window.
Andrew So date simple, usually at three o'clock, sometimes 12 o'clock, sometimes six o'clock. Or four. Oh yeah.
Everett They can work their way. I don't know if I've seen it outside of the cardinals and four.
Andrew Yeah, I don't know. I'm sure that it exists.
Everett And there's some perpetual calendars and some of the Oh, shoot. Yeah, some of the perpetuals and other things like that, like of that ilk, have them in multiple places, you know, whether it be like a 12 o'clock day or like a, like a two, three, four small windows.
Andrew And so we're not telling you anything you guys don't know, but, but, you know, day date, that's, let's one up, let's one up the, the date.
Unknown Ooh.
Andrew Complication. Let's add a date. You know, Seiko, every, every Seiko in the world has a day date. Literally, they all do. Check it. You can look.
Everett SSBO31 only has a date.
Andrew I know I'm wrong. Okay, just so we're clear though. And then you've got a big date, a big date, which, you know, I looked at some of these. Some of these look like wheels. I've never handled a big date, but instead, or not wheels. Well, yeah, wheels. Instead of being a wheel that runs parallel to the watch dial, some of these big dates look like they're wheels that run perpendicular to the watch dial, which I thought, you know, like Price is Right. Interesting. I thought, oh, that's kind of neat. uh then you've got triple calendar yep where you add a month then you've got an annual calendar where you add a year now now the thing about an annual calendar it's a huge disadvantage it's a huge disadvantage because it doesn't it doesn't account for leap year so it's basically just a piece of shit yeah you're gonna have to take that watch off you know every few years and not wear it for a whole year well every four years you cannot you you have to get that watch out and play with the terrible or perpetual calendar you get a perpetual calendar which accounts for the leap year. Yeah. That's literally the only difference between a perpetual calendar and an annual calendar, which I didn't know until today when I read it.
Everett Oh, it makes sense. That, that clicked in my head when I, anyway, that doesn't matter.
Andrew Well, it's actually pretty genius. I don't know how they do it. Um, but oh, it's fantastic. You know that these folks can do that. Now the one, the one date, uh, complication that perhaps I've seen before, but that I had never really thought about before. This is something called a banker's dial. Did you, did you check this out today? Ooh, I did not. So a banker's dial is a date. They call it a date wheel, which I thought that's an interesting word based on what it is, but really what it is is a ring of dates that go around the watch dial. And a hand that independently selects those. Oh, I did see that. So I know Oris has some of these, but it's something that I hadn't ever really thought about. So the one watch I did find that I thought was really cool.
Everett So it's like a 24 hour hand that affects only your date. Right. That's right. It's a revolution a week.
Andrew Yeah. And you know what? I was thinking about it and I think probably this wouldn't require a lot more work than, you know, just a date wheel, right? Cause you just sort of put the hand on the 31 day rotation. And, and so I don't think it's particularly, um, complicated complication, but I thought, well, that's really cool. I don't know why they call it that.
Everett I think it'd be similar to a, a day or a, a day sub dial or a month sub dial. Probably really similar complication, just a different execution.
Andrew Yeah, I think that's fair. So, so I pulled, I pulled this one up. This is the Oris Men 761-769-1404-54MB Arctix Pointer. Uh, I love this watch. You know, it's not cheap. It's a $900 watch on overstock.com of all places. Interesting place to find it, but it's an automatic date wheel. Banker's dial is what they call it. Uh, and I think it's, I think it's brilliant and I, and I kind of want to get one. I kind of want to get one. It looks really cool. You know, it's got this seven link dial. There's another one, a white face on, um, leather that's 707. Uh, this is, oh, this is the art, our telly, a silver dial pointer date pointer date. So anyway, I know I've seen these before, but I've just never thought about it. And I thought, gosh, these are really cool. Uh, these are really cool. So that's the only watch I have today.
Everett We're really, really classic. clean looking watches, too.
Andrew You know, they're a little big. They're 42, which I'd like this watch better in a 40, because... It would make the date impossible to read, I think. Yeah, well, perhaps. I don't know. It's not that big of a difference, but... Yeah, you know, and they're Oris, so, you know, it's gonna be just Beazney's machining and put together and everything. Swiss watch. I really like these.
Everett Nice way to have a date without having the date window. that I think can turn some people off when they're looking for a dressable watch. This fits into that category.
Andrew Yeah, I think you're right. I think you're right. I like the crown. These are cool, man. I dig them. Yeah. I dig them. But I think that basically covers the date complication, right?
Everett I think so. You've got the big date with a full written out at the 12 o'clock. I mean, there's many, many options, but in simplest form, it tells you the day, the date, potentially the month, and maybe the year.
Andrew And the leap year. yeah if you got lots of money yeah yeah you know and and it's funny because you can do all this stuff with digital very easily right the the smallest digital computer in the world can do all of this stuff or you can have some old man in switzerland build you a watch for twenty thousand dollars that does the same thing that's a hard choice yeah you know you some of this stuff you're you're buying the idea And I get that, so certainly no argument against that from my end. But what do you got?
Everett What's your next? Next coming up is the chronograph movement, which again is, I think, arguably as common or as well known as the day-date-year-perpetual-annual complication we just talked about.
Andrew Yeah. And I mean, in terms of functionality, we've already said it, but I think that this is the next step on, I need a watch to do something. I think this would be the natural next stop if you were going down the list of usefulness, because really a chronograph is useful.
Everett You know, what's sad though, the most useful chronograph is also the most expensive split seconds.
Andrew Oh yeah. You know, I don't know a lot about split seconds. I did read some today. What can you tell me?
Everett So what you're looking at, we'll back up a little bit and talk to us about a chronograph. That complication is a manual stopwatch. That's all it is. If you imagine the stopwatch that your gym teacher had when you were in school, that has three buttons, one on the on the left side, one on the right side, and one in the middle, and you rotate that 90 degrees, and you put the buttons in the two and the four o'clock position as pushers. There's your chronograph. Typically your two o'clock pusher is going to actuate the, the chronograph. It's going to actuate and begin your stopwatch. And there's a whole variety, depending on the type of movement that's used in that chronograph, whether it's going down to the increments of seconds that it's measuring. And then that same pusher will typically stop your chronograph and your four o'clock pusher will reset it. And depending, again, on the type of movement, whether it's Mecha Quartz or Quartz or Mechanical, it's going to return to its position on the dial in one way or another. So the SSB-031, the Mecha Quartz that I have, snaps back to the 12 o'clock. And I have yet, and I've played with it a lot, I've yet to find the threshold where it travels clockwise versus counterclockwise.
Andrew It's not 30? Or you don't know?
Everett I've gotten to 30. I've gotten to 30. 1, 2, 3, 4. still comes back counterclockwise and then i'm not spent enough minutes just consecutive minutes timing this out to do it but it takes a long time to get there it does it's somewhere north of 33 interesting and before 45 all right well that it snaps back but you know you you start looking at mechanicals that are going or at um other quartz movements that are gonna rotate back they're gonna snap back they're going to hold
Andrew until another hand catches up to it and then it's going to travel back there's a whole whole variety of options that bring that back what's the dan henry do i thought it did something cool dan henry is just a normal quartz chronograph so it it sort of slow rolls its way back yeah um it's not a flyback per se um but it does uh it does just some interesting things so i don't have it i don't have it down here um but the dan henry does some interesting things so it's got a Gosh, I think it's a tenth of a second, a tenth of a second turner that flies. You know, you're watching, maybe it's a fifth of a second. I don't know as I sit here right now, but it turns really fast, but it only does it for 30 seconds. And then after 30 seconds, it stops.
Everett Makes sense. If you're trying to measure seconds in that type of increment, more than 30 seconds is probably unnecessary.
Andrew Well, but what it does do is it does keep track. It just stops displaying. Because I assume it takes a lot of energy to turn that thing so at 30 seconds that thing stops at zero But then when you press the stop it goes quickly to where it needs to be to tell you what your You know what your seconds turn is what you know what your portion of a second turn is so It's it's pretty neat. It's pretty neat and and I think that it's I It's something that you might not get out of a Megacorse, and maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there are Megacorses that do that. I know the SSB doesn't do it.
Everett No, it doesn't. It measures seconds, minutes, hours. Or seconds, minutes, and yeah, up to 60.
Andrew Probably another thing.
Everett Yeah, I'm trying to think of what that 6 o'clock sub-dial does.
Andrew Who knows if it even does anything. This is how familiar with our watches we are, people. I don't remember. Um, but you know, I thought gosh chronographs are interesting because there's so many different types and you know, We we can and probably should at some point talk about the different styles of chronograph movements But I think we could do it for a full episode, you know, just split seconds I thought gosh, I don't have time to read about this, but i'm so fascinated Um, you know, the earliest chronographs were mono pushers, right? Uh, or or single pushers aka mono poussiere Which I was excited to say when I wrote it down. This is gonna be fun to say mono pusher Mono pusher. That's right. So, uh, you know, you obviously have flybacks and that's, that's the, you know, when you press reset, you get that instant, that instant, very precise movement back to zero. And that's for people doing really sort of fast, small measurements over, over a short amount of time. Uh, split seconds or, or Ray Raponte. I thought it was Ratatouille. Ratatouille. That's possible. Yeah. Yeah. That's, I could have just written it down wrong.
Everett Yeah, it's okay. French is not your native tongue. It's not. So I'll accept that.
Andrew Okay, good. Thank you for that.
Everett But the split seconds is cool. So we talked the chronograph. It's basically, it's a watch nerd's way of saying a stopwatch. Split seconds, you have the ability to actuate two seconds timer hands on that chronograph. So you can simultaneously be measuring two different times, like two different things on that chronograph function. And I need to do more reading into it to see how you, if you have the ability to stop, say the first one that you started or how they sequence when you're stopping your timer. For those of you who can't see, I'm pinching my stopwatch in the air.
Andrew I knew what you were talking about. Who cares about these guys?
Everett But yeah, I need to read more about that because that's an interesting functionality to be able to manipulate either of those times and to do so without interrupting the other.
Andrew Yeah. Well, I think that the variety in chronographs is probably indicative of the development of the chronograph movement. You know, it's happened all over the place. So many people had different ideas about what was going to be what, what was going to be better.
Everett Um, you know, and what they're for, you know, you start looking at, at, uh, you know, getting deeper into it. And now I agree with you that a bezel is in fact a complication because you look at a tachymeter bezel, you look at a slide rule and those are, those are squarely in complications. So yes, I accept that. a dive bezel is in fact a complication
Andrew Oh, like a world timer? Like a world timer, or I think perhaps the most simple version of this is what would be commonly referred to as a dual time watch. Yeah. And a dual time watch, there's a couple different varieties, but I think probably the most common type we see of a dual time watch is perhaps an SKX that's been modded with a 12-hour bezel.
Unknown Yeah.
Andrew That is a no-shit, honest-to-goodness dual-time watch with a dual-time complication. The ability to be able to track a second time zone is accomplished with a 12-hour bezel by... Or menial math. Or menial math, right? By rotating your bezel, rotating your bezel an amount of time different, either plus or minus, to track another time zone. So when I'm at 12 o'clock, midnight where I'm at, if my bezel is ticked two hours to the right and i know in philadelphia or wherever maybe philadelphia's east coast somewhere over there uh it's gonna be two o'clock right it would be counterclockwise not to the right it would be rotated counterclockwise yeah you're right you're you're right you're right about that you son of a bitch i'm on fire today uh so so Uh, you know, that's a pretty simple device. I mean you can do it right now for 30 bucks from from Yuboki's or DLW To a watch you probably already have in your in your cupboard So, uh, this doesn't have to this complication doesn't have to be complicated or expensive or expensive, right? You don't need a dedicated watch necessarily and some of the stuff obviously do you can't I can't turn my my my uh, Skx into a chronograph for instance, but um, I could turn it into a dual time So what is a complication? Well, sure, that's a complication. And in that case, you're trading one complication for another. You're trading the functionality of having a dive bezel, a 60-minute dive bezel, for having that 12-hour time.
Everett You could also take a Dremel and add 12-hour to your dive bezel.
Andrew Right, you could do that. Options. And the other kind of dual time that's fairly common Is a dual time with an inner rotating bezel. So some of these will have a second crown You pull that crown out and you can rotate that that bezel inside And then assuming you can screw down or slap that crown back in it's going to be insulated from bumps or knocks And you're not going to lose that time And those kind of two varieties as well. You you have those that have a 20 affixed 24-hour um bezel inside like uh That Komondorski dual time is that style, or a 12-hour time. So, super interesting. And in both cases, one would assume that the hour hand is going to be fixed. You know, fixed to your main timekeeping unit. So, with that Komondorski, I think when it says 12 o'clock, it's just 12 o'clock. hour hand doesn't operate independently but with the Komondorsky it goes down one goes around once in 24 hours so it's provides some complexity and some something interesting to talk about and to think about and um a different way to think about time which that's you know looking at these things uh that was what occurred to me is there's so many different ways to think about time the delta of time or just the passage of time well and then you so with the dual time now we're now we're going to start working our way into
Everett GMT functionality, which I think is a unique complication in and of itself, but still fits in that dual time, multiple time zone tracking complication where you can have a either like we talked about a fixed hand that is traveling on the same shaft as your movement, uh, as your, your hours and seconds that you can manipulate and is going to travel at the same pace or it's a wholly independent complication within it that you can independently set to uh wherever you want and those come in quartz and mechanical and uh probably about anything you can imagine yeah um but another very cool functionality and i think what comes to mind even even within that subset of timekeeping is the nighthawk against what you would imagine as a traditional gmt that usually it's usually a red hand um And I can't have a red arrow or a red arrow, like some kind of red indicator to separate it from your seconds, minutes, hours, other hands. So you can quickly look and glean the time in the second time zone. Or it could be something as unique as what we're looking at the Nighthawk. That's a, um, 180 degree half circle. Yeah. That's going to travel around and indicate AM and PM on its, on its traverse. Um, but again, another really cool movement that lets you observe. a second time zone quickly, rather than having to do menial math. Because for those of you or us who regularly have to refer to another time zone for any reason, it can be a pain in the ass to be doing that math.
Andrew And I'd always be turning it the wrong way and you'd be like, oh, it's counterclockwise.
Unknown Good deal. Yeah, getting there two hours late.
Andrew Four hours. Yeah, shit. So yeah, no and there's a controversy too about what GMT means and whether it's real GMT or fake GMT or whatever and I don't think we're gonna get into that because I don't really care that much I think no they they do so such similar stuff, you know, I think for certain people in certain trades it might be really important to have one or the other and I frankly couldn't tell you which is which at this point, but It's not important to me. It's not important for me and it wouldn't be so well. What's next? Um
Everett What do you want to talk about next?
Andrew You know, it's interesting because I... Hang on.
Everett Before we get there, I want to talk a little bit about the digital functionality of the dual time or multi time or GMT function that we just discussed. Yeah. Most, many digital watches have that same functionality with a single button push. You look at something like the Casio World Timers. That's a single button push and it takes you across all your big cities. Yeah, typically five time zones that you can manipulate independently. So if you have, if you're somebody who regularly travels and you want to switch time zones, it's a single button push to move to that next time zone. Yeah. Uh, and with the, uh, the digital readout on the world timer specifically, you've got a little LCD map of the world that highlights that time zone that you're looking at on your watch.
Andrew And there, and there is a, uh, an analog version of a world timer too. So, so yeah. the these watches where you see and they have the cities written on a bezel around the outside with the time you know you can independently set that bezel to give you your 24 hour time that you want and you know if you're working in in New York or San Francisco internationally you can look down and say oh in Singapore it is such and such time and in Tokyo it's this time and in Sydney it's this time uh you know so I'll get everybody on Skype right now or whatever I don't know I'm sort of imagining some
Everett Or for those of you who don't care about other people and what time it is for them, you can go with the Astron. And wherever you are, it's going to tell you what time it is.
Andrew Yeah, that's true. That's true. You know, I think next week we could talk about some of these more useful complications. You know, we talked about the Dan Henry 72 already with that chronograph. It's also got an alarm. And when I first saw it, I thought perhaps it was a GMT function or a dual time function. Because the hand looks very similar. It's got that long, skinny, extra hand with an arrow at the end of it. And I thought, oh, it's a GMT. It's an alarm. So that's another, especially for an analog watch, not every digital watch ever made as an alarm.
Everett And you have to figure out how to turn off the beep.
Andrew Yeah, that's right. Which is not always easy. And it can be incredibly complicated. That Dan Henry has just a little extra bezel down there at the 7 o'clock or 7.30 and you just pop it out and wherever you have your crown, you're right.
Everett I'm so good. I'm going to keep it up wherever you're at. I'm going to correct you on things you're not even wrong about. I really appreciate that. Thank you.
Andrew You're welcome. Uh, you know, I think an alarm function, especially in particular on an analog watch, it's such a great idea and unique.
Everett You know, those are hard. I think you're hard pressed to come across those.
Andrew Yeah. You don't see them very often. A combo and a combo chronograph alarm. I'm into it.
Everett Yeah, me too. I bought one. Yeah, true. I'm not, I actually don't have any, but you know, I'm still cool with it.
Andrew I think those are the, that's the other one that I thought, gosh, this is a really important, um, this is a really important complication. Uh, you know, cause, cause the rest of these on my list, uh, moon phase is cool.
Everett Moon phase is cool, but who cares? A helium release valve is cool. Yeah, but nobody needs it. You know, I was actually surprised by the, um, The ISO requirements for certain features and maybe not complications, but certain features of a watch like magnetic resistance and shock resistance and the water resistance that go along with it. It's actually internationally regulated. The shock resistant, to get a shock resistant stamp, it has to, the mechanism is a little bit different than just dropping it, but it replicates the dropping of your watch. from a one meter height onto a wooden surface. So if it's got shock resist, in order to comply with ISO standards, ISO 1413, which you know, you can't, you can't just read those, you got to buy them, right?
Andrew Yes, I did know that.
Everett Well, yeah, that makes sense.
Andrew You know, yeah, you that's, that's what the the test replicates is the ability to, and then after the fall, the ability to still run within plus or minus 60, 60 seconds. Yeah. It's crazy, right?
Everett It's crazy. So we can all feel a lot better about how much we would drop our watches.
Andrew You know, and I think that this is something that is probably less of a thing now than it was in the 19th century, and even the early 20th century, because before, really before IncaBlock developed there, that the standard IncaBlock spring system, watches didn't have that. So sure enough, you drop your pocket watch from waist height. That bit's going down. It's broke. It's broke. Sell over parts. And now we take it for granted, right? I mean, certainly if you drop your watch, you run the risk of it breaking. But if I watch, if I drop my SKX, I would not even occur to me that it wouldn't work when I picked it up.
Everett If you threw it at somebody, it wouldn't occur to you if it wouldn't work. Yeah, well, maybe.
Andrew I mean, you know, depends on where it hits them. But it's more likely to hurt them than than to hurt itself. So but I think we do take that for granted. You know, because every watch basically has some sort of shock resistance system. I think IncaBlock is still the most common. And it took me a little bit of time to figure out what that meant. But I guess it's essentially a spring under the jewel settings, which... Suspends. Suspends that jewel. You know, so there's a jewel and a jewel cap and a spring. And it basically, when it takes a bump, It allows the pivots to keep from breaking. It absorbs it for your mechanics. Yeah, that's right. But I think, you know, Seiko's got Diashock, which essentially does the same thing. You know, these companies have their own sort of proprietary versions of that. A couple of them have interesting, I think Tudor, the Tudor North flag, for instance, has a like a silicone balance spring or something. Is a balance spring a thing? I don't know. But it's got some sort of silicone spring that is unique. And so companies do this different ways, slightly different ways to provide extra protection.
Everett I bet Vostok has a unique way also.
Andrew I bet you're right. I'm almost positive you're right. Yeah.
Everett Everything else is proprietary. Why wouldn't that?
Andrew Right. Well, you know, so then we have, you know, sort of these regular players, Tachymeter, Scale, which is certainly a complication, but it's like rule.
Everett slide rule, but... ABC complications on some of these hardcore digitals or anodigies that have altimeter, barometric pressure, and compass. Yeah. And I think compass is... I think a really undervalued complication in a watch.
Andrew Yeah, it is. These ABC watches typically have digital compasses, which can be off by a lot. They can be off by like 15 degrees, 10 to 15 degrees.
Everett For not long distance navigating, for just general orientation.
Unknown That's right.
Everett Orientating as some people call it, which drives me absolutely fucking nuts when people say orientate yourself to this. Orienteer yourself over there. Yeah. Like, no, shut up. Like orient, just say, say it like that, like a normal human person.
Andrew But, but yeah, right. So it's not a precise device, but they're a way to do a thing. And, and even the compasses on, you know, the Alpinist or whatever, there's, a ingenious way to use that just based on looking up at the sky and seeing the sun and and turning that dial and all of a sudden you're oriented uh to to which direction you need to be going and you know uh depending on where you are in the world you might not know well the sun falls basically there and i know that that's southwest right you you know if you don't have uh if you don't have that idea of where the sun might fall It's an incredibly useful thing, especially midday when, you know, in the summer and sun's directly overhead, plug that thing in, you're still going to be able to, you're still going to need to get that angle. But once you have it, Oh, okay. Yeah. That's where I'm going.
Everett Pretty cool. Good function. I've been thinking about getting a, like a watch, a watch strap slip on compass to put on that just is a quick removable. They're like three bucks and they're not going to be super accurate, but it's going to give me a general idea of my direction of travel.
Andrew Yeah. What watch would you wear it on?
Unknown Any of them?
Everett Or just put it in my pocket, like... I would never wear one of those.
Andrew I would just never. I would just never. That's fair. I'd be more likely to, like, fill my pocket with a big lens attic than to... I'm not inclined to do that.
Everett I don't like carrying shit in my pockets.
Andrew All right. Uh, tachymeter.
Everett For the third time.
Andrew Jumping secondhand.
Everett Yeah.
Andrew power reserve magnetic resistance magnetic resistance certainly right uh made famous by a couple of very high-end swiss watches um and then we get to and then we get to the two we've already talked about tourbillon which we've talked about already uh maybe maybe not a complication minute repeater certainly is and minute repeater minute repeater so do you know do you know what the function of a minute repeater is what what the actual purpose is beauty it's not It's not. It's something way better than that. Beauty? A minute repeater was a way to be able to tell time in the dark. It is indiglo. Before indiglo. That's what a minute repeater is. And that, that is something that I didn't know before today that I think is absolutely beautiful. Uh, I am going to instantly start saving every penny I make for the next 10 years so that I can buy one so that I can lay in my bed. flip that lever and hear those chimes so i know what time it is if the watch purchase isn't what uh isn't what gets you put on the streets it'll be listening to the chimes every five minutes totally true totally true so essentially worthless right because you know we've got indiglo we've got uh loom you know some of it better than other but but all of it passable um The odds that you can't see your watch at night are pretty low.
Everett And if you can't see your watch at night, you'd likely have a cell phone.
Andrew Right, exactly. So totally useless. Totally useless, but still pretty neat. In my mind, pretty freaking cool.
Everett Just cool technology.
Andrew Yeah.
Everett Same as having a hand wind only.
Andrew And I find it so much cooler knowing that it was a way to be able to tell time in the dark.
Everett See, I thought it was just kind of a needlessly extravagant
Andrew functionality. I did too. I did too this morning and this morning I thought minute repeaters were stupid and now I don't.
Everett I mean, I think they're stupid because I'll never be able to afford one.
Andrew Yeah. Well, you might be able to. There's some Chinese companies that make minute repeaters for in the low, you know, low thousands, even maybe high hundreds. Um, you have to look for them, but I, I, and tourbillons, there's some Chinese companies that make relatively affordable. I don't think I need a tourbillon. Yeah, of course you don't. But if you were going to get one, you could if you wanted one.
Everett I don't know if I want one. I don't know if I don't want one. Like if someone wants to send me their tourbillon and say, here you go, have it for freezies. Thanks. Yeah, I don't know if it doesn't really sing to me.
Unknown Not like a minute repeater does.
Andrew But you know that that's interesting because the two you brought up when you brought this up were ABC time and shock resistance. And you know, I think that there's something to be said for ABC watches that's different than a complication the way we've been talking about them largely. Certainly it's a complication, but it gets me thinking about the idea of a complication I suspect is changing. And there's two things that sort of came to mind today as I was poking around for this. One, ABC complications. These are digital, sort of, it literally is a barometer.
Everett Do you think we could classify text messaging as a complication because an Apple Watch can text?
Andrew Well, that's interesting because I think, I gathered from my research, so I've never worn an Apple Watch, I've never touched one, I mean literally never touched one. They're pretty damn comfortable. I think that Apple calls their apps for the Apple Watch complications. I think that that is the term for an Apple Watch app. Uh, and maybe I'm wrong about that and feel free to correct me if I am but that ought to if they don't that's the sense I got so So then the then the question becomes is there a distinction there? And and if the distinction is just well, if it's apple, it's a it's an apple complication if it's anything else It's a complication complication and and so that's stupid, right?
Everett That's a question that becomes is an apple watch a watch.
Andrew Yeah, right So so assuming an apple watch is a watch and an app that you add to your Apple Watch is a complication. Let's assume those things are true. Then all of a sudden, the idea of complications has just completely expanded, right? We've gone from a fairly closed universe, fairly closed universe to angry birds, angry birds. Exactly right. How? I mean, I don't know, maybe I'm overthinking this, but it seems like it's a phrase that's probably in It's in an evolution in a no shit in a big in a big leap. That's right. Yeah, that's right. You know, it wasn't that long ago where you couldn't have had ABC watch. And then that changed, you know, probably in the, you know, 80s, perhaps the 90s.
Everett It wasn't that long ago, you couldn't have a digital watch.
Andrew That's right. And so all of a sudden, we've got an entirely different world. And so we've gone from, we've gone from, you know, perhaps the 70s, um you know where you just didn't have a lot you had gmt and you had moon phase and you had chronometer uh or not chronometer uh chronograph which is unique maybe we'll we'll talk maybe next week about what a chronometer is yeah worth a worthwhile discussion i think that's right i think that's right um to to now you know it endless possibilities i mean what can you do on an apple watch i don't know if you can play angry birds But I assume if you play games on an Apple Watch, if you can't now, you could, you can soon. And you know, MP3 players and well, MP3 players. What year is it? I know, I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. But you know what I mean, right? The ability to do anything. I mean, anything that you could do with a computer, Wikipedia. I've got a Wikipedia complication.
Everett Voice text is not great on a watch. Is it not? No. I've tried it. Oh, I've not tried it. I've been on the receiving end of a lot of
Andrew um incomprehensible messages right yeah right i mean you type yours and i can't read them sometimes so i spell good and i use grammar and punctuation i'm a good texter so yeah i mean it just it's interesting to me i mean the fact that we're talking about complications i think it's worth a mention but i i suspect that that's a word that's meaning is in some sort of flux well in the midst of potentially the biggest change to
Everett Urology since the courts.
Andrew Yeah, perhaps perhaps. Yeah Well, all right. I I think that's it.
Everett Do we need to do we need to I think we've touched on them I think anything anything outstanding Maybe warrants its own episode.
Andrew I think that's right. I think that's right. Well, uh, I think it was a fun topic guys if you have anything to say about it or if you know, I Certainly expect that we missed at least one thing.
Everett Oh a bunch of things today. We were we were talking about before this episode we're like oh i don't know if we have a lot and turns out we have way more than we thought we had right uh and we've got a couple great episode suggestion ideas from folks a couple good watch brands to look into that might find their way into a whole episode dedicated to them yeah thank you for your feedback keep sending it in ever it reads the messages i read once every other week because i suck at social media i just suck at it um i don't know if it's by choice or by like an object in motion stays in motion kind of kind of scenario yeah i lean more towards i suck but i'm i'm also okay with being an object at rest you don't suck you don't suck thanks bro yeah yeah well other stuff what do you got me other stuff i have been on a bit of a corned beef kick you have you told me you were going to open a corned beef restaurant uh food truck no no no stick with me here folks imagine a food truck whose entire menu consists of corned beef foundation foods whether it be corned beef nachos, corned beef tacos with battered fries and slaw, corned beef sliders, uh, corned beef and hash, Reuben's, do you need anything? Poutine! Like, for those of you who don't know what poutine is, it's french fries, smothered in gravy, with cheese curds, and then throw some shredded corned beef on that bitch. Holy shit, it is good. But here's the deal, I would go to that food truck three, four times a week. I would, I would get real fat, because none of that's good for you. But I love corned beef. And so I've done, I've brined my own corned beef before a couple of times. And I've just recently purchased a couple bags of pre-brined corned beef. And I have to say, doing it at home, the result is not so much better than the result of out of the bag that it's worth doing it at home. So I bought three bag, like three bag corned beef briskets. At Costco? At WinCo, but same game. Uh, and just threw my freezer and all I do is I cut it open and I throw it in the slow cooker with like an inch of water and it turns out so good.
Andrew You thaw it first?
Everett Nope. Nope. Right in the slow cooker. No effort. The only effort is that I have to run it underwater to create enough space to, to break the bag off of the, off of the brisket.
Andrew And I bet it's not that much more expensive.
Everett Oh, uh, no, it's way cheaper. Wow.
Andrew Oh, is it cheaper?
Everett Oh, way cheaper than, than to buy a slab of brisket. It's probably $5 more in cost than a pre-brined slab of brisket for corned beef, which maybe speaks to the quality of it, but I don't give a shit. It's been brined, and then it's going in the slow cooker.
Andrew And unless there's a specific flavor you're going for, some specific curing process that you're looking for.
Everett I'm not looking for revolutionary. I'm looking for delicious, and that's what I'm getting out of these bagged corned beefs. Those of you who haven't had corned beef, shame on you. Try it. You can do so much with it. And do try making some brown gravy, bake some fries, get some cheese curds, and then a little bit of sauerkraut and shred some corned beef, put it on top of that, and your world is going to change.
Andrew I've always said that the true test of any gastropub is the Reuben. We share this. If you want to evaluate a gastropub on quality of food, you're going to find it in the Reuben because a couple of things are going to happen. A Reuben that's on shitty rye bread and if that happens you you probably can assume That they're not taking a lot of care in there in their food selection, right? and you're gonna get a Reuben that's either fantastic, you know a wonderful marble rye or or You know some very just beautiful lush corned beef or you're gonna get the opposite And that, for me, is the true test. I'm able to know so much about a kitchen. You know, we've both spent many years in the restaurant industry. I think you probably a little more than I did, even.
Everett No, you made up the balance, I think, in the last couple of years.
Andrew So for those who don't know, I worked as a ute in the restaurant industry. And then as I became a lawyer, I started my own practice. Is that like a eunuch? It is the same thing.
Unknown Okay. Yeah.
Andrew Uh, and so I started my own practice and you know Just hung a shingle and and I had a baby at home two babies then at home and we just didn't have any money And so I was bartending and and waiting tables at night in order to Continue to provide for the family. And so you're right. Yeah, I think During that little phase of time and i'll tell you I loved it.
Everett Oh, it's so fun. I loved it. It took me a long time even as an active duty army officer to catch up with how much I was making bartending. Right.
Andrew Right. I mean, the money is good. It's fun. It's fun. It's always entertaining. It can be stressful, too. It's a hard job. But yeah, if you get into a good place, it's great.
Everett But I'm going to second your Reuben. And I've used that same test. And I don't know if we've ever talked about this, but I don't think we have. It's interesting that we both independently come to that conclusion because it is so easy Relatively, like if you're making quality food in your kitchen, it is so easy to do a Reuben right, but it's all in the details. Are you doing in-house pastrami or in-house corned beef? Are you doing in-house sauerkraut? Are you throwing Thousand Island on it? Are you using shitty rye? If you're not doing those things, you're definitely doing everything else right because it's just a little bit extra effort to get a good Reuben out of your kitchen. And if you're doing that, you're doing everything else right.
Andrew Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's right. If you're putting those extra steps into making a Reuben, then everything's going to be spot on. So, and you can't always tell, right? A cheeseburger is good no matter what. Um, and, and certain things are just going to be good no matter what. Pizza is always going to be pizza and there's multiple degrees of pizza, but that Reuben, you can tell how, how much they care about the product. Oh yeah. Immediately. Well, good. I'm really excited for this food cart.
Everett Yeah, me too. Right. So somebody opened it up. We'll travel. I'll come to you. You were opening it up. Oh, no, I want somebody else to. I don't want to assume the financial risk of nobody liking corned beef the same way that I do.
Andrew All right. All right. Well, so for me, as was alluded to earlier in the episode, I have picked up a new hobby. Oh, boy. Another one? Another one. And it's really an offshoot of a hobby I already have.
Everett I think it's a natural evolution.
Andrew It's a natural evolution. Perhaps not for everybody, but I've started shooting camera photography.
Everett Oh, I was going to say seagulls?
Andrew I've started shooting seagulls and I've started shooting photography in film, in 35mm film.
Everett Like film canister comes in a box, you expose it to light, you ruin it? Yes, that stuff.
Andrew So I have to give a shout out to our good friend AJ Barse. Thanks AJ. Thanks AJ. I've been talking to AJ for, I don't know, a couple months about picking up an analog camera, you know, for those of you don't know, AJ, AJ Barset is the host of the AJ Barset is the host of the Bellingham podcast or co host of the Bellingham podcast. And he's got his independent project called the analog Explorer, which he talks about analog watches, and analog photography, and just sort of the idea of an analog lifestyle and how that affects him. And it's wonderful. His stories are just really well done. And his photography is great. But I You know, we've been talking, I said, gosh, I want to get a, I want to get a camera body. And so there's been a couple of models I've been looking at and he's kind of been keeping an eye out for me and he sent me some stuff. And, um, I just, it just so happened. My mom said, Hey, uh, your grandpa's Pentax K 1000 is hanging around somewhere. Would you want it if I could find it? Yes. Yes. So mom brought down the K 1000 and I, as best as I can tell, this thing was probably last shot in the early 1980s. Which means... Was there any undeveloped film in it? There was not. No, and you know what, bless grandpa's heart, he had taken the battery out too, because that was the big concern, was that it had a battery in it. Look at that. But the... I suspect probably mid-80s, and maybe late 80s, but doubtful. And grandpa's died several years ago, so I'm not able to ask him, but it mechanically is perfect, because those things are bulletproof. The meter works. perfectly. I gave it a good scrub down and it looks amazing. I grabbed a roll of cheap Fujifilm and I ran it through it and holy cow. They turned out right. Holy cow, man. You've done good. It's crazy. And you know, the thing is, I don't know how much I've learned about photography, right? Because you learn and it's slow, but the concepts are all really natural to me. Um, and so certain things I didn't know, and there was some discomfort in, in figuring some things out and using a traditional light meter. You look through and you set your ISO and you know, your ISO is set by the film and you're compensating primarily with, with aperture because you know, you might be maxed out on shutter speed. That thing only has a 1, 1000. shutter speed. So I mean, it's just different. And you know, there's all these cliche, you know, every if you've ever heard anybody talk about why film photography is better. These ideas are cliche and kind of dumb, you know, oh, it slows you down. It makes you think about what you're doing. And that's good. You know, it's totally true. I all these things that sounded cliche to me now I understand right it and it's not that they're not cliche because they are But they're true. I think the truth is something different than what I expected it to be.
Everett The truth is that you are more engaged with what you're doing. Which is, I think it's a similar comparison to driving an automatic versus a manual transmission in a car. It's probably true. You are more a part of what you're doing. You can't be thoughtless. And I think that's maybe... You have to be more thoughtful with an analog or mechanical tool than with the digital.
Andrew And I think it's easy to imagine that that wouldn't be good. That wouldn't be fun, right? And it certainly it was for me before, right? Sometimes I probably, you know, I can certainly say sometimes I don't want to have to manually focus. And with the cam 1000, that's it.
Everett I'm sure sports photographers love digital photography, but people who are hobbyists or even professionals who aren't photography, photographizing, photographing, uh, Like the paparazzi and sports photographers, I'm sure the ones who most appreciate digital.
Andrew You know, there's some limitations, right? If I'm taking a portrait and I'm in a really sort of wide aperture, I do not suspect I'm going to be able to get as good a focus. You'll get there.
Everett I doubt it. It's going to take many rolls of film.
Andrew I doubt it. I don't think that, certainly at least with an SLR, maybe with a rangefinder, and I don't have one of those at this time, but I'll probably pick one up eventually. Maybe with a rangefinder. I don't think with an SLR I'll ever get there. It's just the function is not there. So, you know, the ability to point that cross point at someone's eye and half press the button, that computer dials it. And if it doesn't dial it, you micro calibrate it. Press it again. I doubt very seriously I'll get to that level. My eyes aren't good enough and it's just hard. But with that one exception, you're so much more engaged. You nailed it. You hit the nail on the head. I'm having a ton of fun. I've gone through a role at this point and most of the way through another, so I'll develop that. I have this whole other world of gas. This just opened up to me and that's exciting and terrifying for my life. I'm sure so But but the reality is I can take the same picture with my k1000 that somebody could take with an icon d5 or d6 or an iPhone or Well, no, no, I'm saying something different. So okay or not a non a d6 and f6 So a Nikon f6 a film camera, so the film cameras are so much less dependent on on the gear is, you know, digital, there's a pretty marked difference between an iPhone and a D and a D five, for instance. Oh, yeah, for sure. You know, the film quality, don't tell me that gear doesn't matter, because it totally does. That's not true. But for film, the primary gear is the film, right? So if you've got a good lens, and that Pentax SM, those Pentax SMC lenses, the prime lenses are super sharp. So if you're in focus, you're going to get a fantastic exposure, you know, the best film camera ever made, arguably Nikon F6, is not going to give me a better exposure on Fuji Superior 400 than my Pentax will. It's just not going to. I'm going to get the same exposure. You know, if I'm at the same aperture and I'm at the same shutter speed and, you know, barring some pretty minute variables, it's going to be the same, right? So that's different. And I think that that will make me less prone to want to spend money on gear You know, everybody, that's right. You know, I do want to get a range finder. I don't want to get a Leica, but I want to get something, you know, and I'm looking and the ones I want to are probably $300, $400. And so that's something that's in the future.
Everett When you're talking range finder, are you talking, are you talking like light range? Are you talking like a digital distance to your subject?
Andrew A range finder is a type of camera. So if you know what a Leica looks like, a Leica is a range finder or my Fuji X20 is not a range finder. But that's what it looks like. It's the smaller body camera, smaller lenses. They don't have a mirror inside them. So a rangefinder is the original mirrorless camera, although it's not digital, but it does a similar thing. So they've got a shutter inside, but no mirror. And so the way you see the image is not through the lens. You don't see TTL or through the lens. You see through a little window that's up in the corner and it gives you split images. and you have a little dial on the bottom of the lens, typically, that you turn, and it brings your images together once they match up, you're in focus. So, it's a superior focusing system at a shorter focal length. You get better image quality from it because the time to get in focus is less. So, anyway, it's fun, I'm digging it. That's not actually my other thing. My other thing is a YouTube channel, Mac Shoots Film. This is a guy, Mac McDonald, and I don't know if Mac is his first name, But if you're into this at all, check him out. He's super easy to watch. He does everything in a very easy way. He's only got not very many followers at this point. You know, I checked today and it was like 10,000 or maybe even less. Like, gosh, I don't know. So he's this newer YouTube guy. But his videos are great. And he's just shooting pictures and talking about film and his process. And he's sort of going through it right now, you know, and he's going to blow up And they also just started a podcast called Grainy Days Mac and a couple of his friends. I bet he has a darkroom. You know, I don't think he does, but I do, I do know he develops it and scans at home. So, um, yeah, I mean, it's, it's something fun to get into and to play with. Uh, I did tell you earlier today, I'm, I'm suspecting that I might become a film shooter almost exclusively. I don't know what's going to happen yet, but I have zero interest to play with my digital stuff right now. So we'll see what happens.
Everett It's a good transition. I'm proud of you. Ever-growing and evolving. Oh, well. I just play around. Yeah, like we all do. Serial hobbyists. Anything else? That's it for me, man.
Andrew All right, you guys. Thank you for joining us for this episode of 40 in 20. Don't forget to tune back in next week for another hour of watches, food, drinks, life, and other things we like. Bye-bye. Our music today is Bummin' on Tremolo by Kevin MacLeod of incompetech.com, licensed under creative commons by attribution 3.01.