Watchplate.com Review

I am one of those nerds who jumped on the Apple Watch fanclub, stayed up until midnight, and made it into the second delivery group for my Stainless Steel 42mm Milanese watch.  After a lot of trolling macrumors.com, the watch finally arrived, and so the first thing I did was…. send it off to a stranger to dip it in chemicals to slightly alter the hue of the material.

In fairness, it was also done in solidarity with a fellow forum member, who decided to start this company with the support and prompting of the macrumors community (myself included), so I was more than happy to contribute.  I was order #11, and us early birds, he gave us a $100 kickback if we would help spread the word on social media.  Being a student of VFX, I decided to play with youtube, and see if I could come up with something.

It turned into a bit of a project, including watching a lot of this guy, to learn how to photograph jewelry.  And of course, a lot of hours on videocopilot.net.

The folks at WatchPlate.com add a plating of 35 micron of 24K gold, which is much more than normal jewelers use, and hopefully means it will last longer.  [ UPDATE: In order to match the hue of the Edition more closely, WatchPlate.com is now using an 18K plating process, rather than the 24K depicted here. ]

Here is the video I posted to youtube.  I am particularly proud of the intro frame, made in AfterEffects.

This is what my photograph rig looked like when it was done… it is totally hacked together with paper taped to an old 5-arm light I had in college, and a sheet of yellow colored-paper to act as a reflective bar:

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The results were quite good, if I do say so myself.  As close to professional as you can get from a couple lights, an empty bucket, and a Sony camera.

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