Playing with retro-tech.

#vostok #amphibia #photography
Catskinner

The Amphibia origins can be traced back to the late 60's and it first went to space on the 1975 Soyuz-17 mission. Since then it did what a lot of USSR products did: It remained basically unchanged for decades. Why mess with something that is good enough for the people when the alternative is spending one life counting trees in Siberia?

The Russian successor of the USSR Amphibia isn't really a direct descendant because it's exactly the same watch manufactured in the same plant and with the same aging machinery (and probably by the same people). It's basically the wristwatch equivalent of a T-72B3 trying to pass as a modern MBT: Both were launched on the same year, and both could undeniably be build better.

Being a living fossil isn't necessarily a bad thing because it allow me to play a bit with technology that was cutting edge at about the same time when I was just discovering how cool were Lego blocks.

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The case back is first thing which is fun to play with because of how cool it is. The design is simply genius and as a result one of the nicer features is that the scuba dude is always aligned.

It also offers proven 200M WR, allows for opening and closing the case without shearing the giganormous rubber seal sitting beneath, but this is not really important because, just look at the dude doing bloob bloob bloob there!

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The second fun thing is the overly thick and curved acrylic covering the dial. It probably won't be able to stop a javelin ATGM attack coming from the top but chances are that everything else around and including you will disintegrate before it does.

It's perfectly clear when viewed from above but it will display crazy distortions from the side, which allows me to have a lot of fun taking photos from different angles.

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The movement inside also an antique, it clunks happily at 19,800 bps with an official accuracy of -20 to +60 seconds per day (my 710 is almost COSC) and they are a pain to set the date. QC at the factory is also something that was dragged from the 60's, however if you get a good one it will keep on for decades.

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Another advantage is size. Traditional Amphibia are not very large despite being very thick, they wear remarkably well on thin wrists and on mine the 710 wear pretty much like the Islander ISL-68 "mini Turtle".