The 6 steel case JLC Masters with just time or date

[FuzzyB]

I was curious how these watches looked side by side in properly scaled images, so I pulled images from JLC's website and scaled them in Photoshop according to the sizes stated on the JLC website. Here is the result of that comparison.




As I was looking at the images, something struck me as odd, so I checked the lug sizes in the scaled images. I can't say that I was too surprised to find that the lugs were now improbable sizes unless JLC actually likes to use 19.5mm straps. Unfortunately, JLC doesn't believe lug widths are relevant information and fails to provide that critical piece of information based on their website. I rescaled the photos to match the closest reasonable lug dimensions based on the alignment of the lugs with the minute markers and this is what I came up with. I actually think the bottom row may be a little off as I found reference to 21mm lug widths for the 40mm diameter cases. I also found references to 20mm lug widths, so I'm not sure what to believe. Anyway, it does put the sizes of the cases in a little more perspective. There is a great deal of similarity in the lugs of the bottom three watches, but the lugs of the top three vary significantly.

EDIT: If anyone knows the true lug widths for these watches, please let me know and I will update the images accordingly.

[Der Amf]

I was curious how these watches looked side by side in properly scaled images, so I pulled images from JLC's website and scaled them in Photoshop according to the sizes stated on the JLC website. Here is the result of that comparison.

Something that immediately struck me when seeing this was difference between these two:




The Small Seconds seems much bigger though of course it's not. I can't decide what to ascribe this to.

The perspective of the render being closer in?
The lugs being shorter and more squat?
The minute dots being smaller?
The nice plump subdial being surrounded by indices that shrink as they approach?
The way the render has the strap curl away sooner?

I'll try to find some IRL photos to see how many of these ideas stand up

Edit - bonus idea: the shrinking indices also allows the logo to be higher, giving a nice broad stretch of space between it and the centre of the dial

[FuzzyB]

The Small Seconds seems like the outlier compared to the other models. The design almost intentionally gives a fisheye effect for the reasons you mentioned. The Small Seconds feels like the dial is trying to escape the confines of its case whereas the Ultra Thin seems content to be restrained within the confines of its case. I don't know if this impacts the visual impression much, but playing with the images some more, I found that the Small Seconds is not as directly on as the Ultra Thin.

My initial impression was that the lug size (both length and width) were dominating my perception of the watch. If you look at where the lugs lie with respect to the dial markers, you can see that the Small Seconds has a noticeably smaller lug width. The lugs are also significantly shorter.

I decided to play around with the images some more. Here's a split view of the watches:



The movement of the name upwards certainly seems to make a big impact on the perception of size. Also, the length of the indices seems to play an important role. To me, the long index at 3 o'clock seems to pull the case inwards, giving it a compressed look. The Ultra Thin appears wider at the 9 o'clock position due to the openness of the dial in that area.

To eliminate the impact of the lug length and visual impact of the straps, I cropped those out of the image as well:



Cropping the lugs minimizes the size differential a little, but the more open area between the hands and name seems to make a bigger impact.