Seiko 7A38 - by the numbers

I've never made any secret of my utter loathing of 'Soshul Meedya' and some of the mindless morons and self-promoting bimbos, show-offs and wannabes that frequent it. I did once have a FaceBook account and had amassed some 350 alleged friends, including almost the whole grid of then current F1 drivers (2000's). Through one of my influential contacts I was just one click away from Harry Wales (Prince Harry). But eventually I became sick and tired of being bombarded with irrelevant crap. The final straw for me was when I was forcibly migrated to the new 'Timeline' version in late 2011 - I deleted my account, in a fit of pique. Can't honestly say I've missed it.

Then there's the photo sharing app Instagram, also owned by Facebook, which I'd deliberately avoided signing up to. However, over the last couple of years, whilst googling images of 7A38's - either just idly, or actively searching for something in particular, I started coming across more and more photos posted on Instagram.

Here's a copy and paste of something I wrote in another thread, 3 months ago.

Originally posted by myself on April 22, 2020 at 4:00 AM:

As I've mentioned in a few recent updates to various threads in the 7A38-xxxx model specific forum section, being stuck indoors at home during the COVID-19 'Lockdown', in an effort to alleviate the boredom, in desperation, I've resorted to browsing Instagram. Doing so has actually turned up a few 'gems' ....

There were a few Instagram posters, whom I immediately recognised as current, or erstwhile no longer active contributing forum members. There were also a couple of other posters who I didn't know, for example Laury Dubuis, that I wanted to contact. The only way I could do that was by opening an Instagram account. So I relented.

Initially, for the first couple of months, I just used it to contact the occasional poster, comment on a few posts, search on hashtags and give out 'Likes'. I'll say now that I only 'Like' photos that I genuinely like, not everything that passes for a 7A38. There is, unfortunately an element of over-hyped crap on Instagram - some either badly photographed and / or poorly cropped. It's just as well there isn't a 'Dislike' icon. 'Cos I'd probably use it quite a lot.

Anyway, my activity seems to have not gone un-noticed and by the beginning of this week, somehow, still without having uploaded a single photo, I'd managed to attract 80 followers.

Therein lay the problem. Instagram is designed to be a mobile phone app, with very few concessions to 'old skool' Desktop PC users like myself.  99.9% of my photos are taken with my trusty Panasonic DMC-515 camera and then uploaded to my PC. I'm not a big mobile phone user (other than for making calls) and I've probably got less than half a dozen photos on it.

Hence the reason I hadn't managed to upload a single photo. Not that I was unduly bothered. I had sussed, a little while ago, the existence a Web-based programme Deskgram which you could use to upload photos to Instagram from your desktop, but I objected to paying $2.99 / month for the prvilege.

More recent googling turned up a few free alternatives, like this CNET article:

http://www.cnet.com/how-to/instagram-from-your-mac-or-pc-how-to-post-pictures-from-the-browser-instead-of-the-app/

But try as I might, I couldn't get any of them to display the elusive [+] upload button.

I'd almost given up (again) when I found a free Chrome extension by 120Studio.

It showed as having 100,000+ users and so I tentitively downloaded it to my PC.

I have to say, it works - but only after a fashion. I suspect some of it's functionality is impaired by my constantly running AdBlock-Plus. I imagine I don't really need to tell readers which of those two Chrome extensions I regard with greater importance. 

Those readers already using Instagram will be familiar with the default photo format - It's a dead square 1:1 ratio and all uploaded images are automatically re-sized to a maximum of 1080x1080 pixels. Sometimes they appear to have been automatically cropped to fit that size - quite often badly so, which is another reason why I wasn't particularly keen to start using it.

As I wrote before, I take my photos using my trusty old Panasonic DMC-F515, in 4:3 format, most often using the lower 3 Megapixel setting, which come out measuring 2048x1536 pixels, with file sizes around 1.5MB, which gives a reasonably good quality resolution and a 'sensible' size for uploading.

I wasn't going to take any photos especially for uploading to Instagram, so I went to my current month photo folder and chose this wrist shot, the first one I'd posted in the WRUW thread this month, on 1st July, of one of my stainless 7A38-7029's.

Although that Instagram Chrome extension theoretically has an inbuilt cropping tool, which displays the photo full size, with grid lines overlaid, try as I might, I could not get it to work.  In the end I gave up and just clicked 'Next' and 'Share', to upload. This is how it came out:

I guess that was beginner's luck.

That photo measures the standard Instagram maximum of 1080x1080 pixels, with a file size of only 190KB - compared to 1.54MB of the original, hence the slight loss of sharpness. It may look 'bigger' - as if it's been 'zoomed' but that's merely an illusion.

As regular followers of the WRUW thread may have gathered, over the years I've developed and refined my own personal standard format wrist shot. They're nearly always taken outdoors, against the shaded side brick wall of my house. The watch is usually angled approx. 30-45 degrees from perpendicular, in an effort to get the correct amount of light falling on the dial, but without unwanted reflections. I always ensure to capture the entire watch head and case lugs and include as much of the complete bracelet in the frame as practicable. The watch's hands are usually set to either 10:10am or 1:50pm. Nine times out of ten, I'll be wearing a blue cotton oxford shirt (not always the same one, I'll hasten to add - I have half a dozen of them) with a triangle of blue cuff in the bottom left hand corner. This has become my de facto 'trademark' (inspired by Jay Leno's Garage casual dress style). Let's face it - it's all about the watch that's on my wrist - not my shirtmaker (M&S, incidentally). I've also found that it helps to quicky identify any of my photos that are being 'borrowed' by dishonest eBay sellers and hijacked by Pinterest.

I think it generally works well in the original 4:3 photo format. What I hadn't really considered of any importance before, is that by including only the minimal 'right' triangle of shirt cuff in frame, means that the watch face is usually left of centre.

Anyway, flushed with the comparative initial success of my first 'test mule' upload to Instagram, two days ago, I decided to upload 'a few' more of my recent wrist shots from the WRUW thread. In fact, I made it a round dozen in that first batch. I guess it was kind of a sop to my 80 followers - many of whom had nothing but a blank page to look at for the last 2 months. I chose photos of a variety of watches that I thought would not only be of interest, but in their original 4:3 photo format, were what I had considered decent photos. Then it all started to go wrong.

This is how my first two uploads of Yema N8 Flygraf and Spationaute III turned out:

As you can see, Instagram's arbitrary automatic 1:1 format cropping has chopped off the top left hand lug and 10 o'clock pusher from both photos. Needless to say, if you check the original photos posted in the WRUW thread, they're there, in shot !

I was seriously unimpressed (understatement) !!    I'll admit that at first, I'd thought about deleting them, but as they'd already quickly attracted a few 'Likes', I caved in and left them. Naturally, because there was nothing wrong (in my eyes) with my original photos, I initially mistakenly blamed it on Instagram - and that only partially functional Chrome extension I'd used to upload them. However, when I looked again at my original 4:3 photos, although everything was certainly there in frame, the positions of the watches were biased towards the left of the image.

The following evening I decided to try uploading a dozen more. But instead of using more recent wrist shots, I browsed my photo folders, looking for any older photos, where the watch was more centrally positioned in the shot. This met with moderate success. Then I decided to compare the cropped 1:1 versions of a few photos, I'd uploaded, with their original 4:3 images. Transpires Instagram's arbitrary automatic cropping is not quite as random as I'd first thought. From the couple of examples I've measured, if left to its own devices, Instagram crops the 1:1 format from smack bang in the middle, keeping the original image's full height. So as an experiment, I tried copying a couple of photos to my desktop and selectively pre-cropping them to 1535x1535 pixels square, before uploading them.

As a comparison, I again used a different Yema N8 Flygraf and Spationaute III:

With rather more satisfactory results !

Incidentally, in case anybody checking my Instagram page doesn't recognize any of the two dozen photos I've uploaded - trust me, there's absolutely nothing new there. All those same photos can be found here on the forum, in their original uncropped 4:3 format, naturally being wrist shots, most have been posted in the WRUW thread. (Also possibly one or two of the 7A38-xxxx model specific threads).

Of course Instagram is a lot more than just a photo sharing site. To many users, it's a tool for celebrity-seeking, self-promoting wannabes and competitive marketing. 

Which brings me to the odious subject of Hashtags: their abuse and mis-use. 

Like 'Soshul Meedya' in general, I abhor the # Hashtag symbol. I still work for a large corporate company, whose internal marketing department wastes a small fortune of investors' money by generating one more new hashtag campaign after another. I should have retired years ago, but frankly the remuneration package is just too good to walk away from. A few months back, I was invited via Yammer to come up with a suggestion for the company's next hashtag campaign. Bad move. My immediate thought was #notanotherfuckinghashtagferchrissake

Rant over. Or that part of it. Almost three months ago, I had a brief discussion about the inconsistent use of hashtags on Instagram, with forum member Rowan. It's on page 85 of the WRUW thread, but here's a copy and paste of two posts:

With hindsight, my previous concept of simply using hashtags to search for images on Instagram was a tad naïve, admittedly.  In terms of inconsistent use, often by their omission, matters haven't really improved in 3 months. As of today, a search on #7A38 returns 1300 images and #Seiko7A38 returns 1781 - around the same ratio. I still have no idea how many images are being found by both searches and have absolutely no intention of ever trying to work it out.

In following a couple of Instagram posters who regularly upload photos of 7A38's (among other photos), I've observed one tags his photos with only #7A38 and the other only exclusively uses #Seiko7A38.  Hence the reason, from the outset, I elected to tag all my photos with both. Doing so very likely contributed to my first 'test mule' photo, of that 7A38-7029 rapidly garnering 50 'Likes'. 

That said, it's my highest score so far and the photos I've uploaded since have failed to attract as many. Evidently, based on the advice of a helpful Instagram poster and erstwhile forum member,  I'm not adding anywhere near enough hashtags.  I've since expanded my basic repertoire of hashtags to include:

#7a38 #seiko7a38 #seikochronograph #seikochrono #seikovintage ....

and where applicable, any additional manufacturer / model specific tag.

From the limited amount of research I've reluctantly done on them, Instagram evidently allows users to embed a maximum of 30 hashtags per post / photo.

But from another online article I read, apparently 11 is the ideal optimum number.

However, checking a few other posters hastags, some are using as many as 20.

These include what I consider semi-relevant and some totally irrelevant tags like:

#horology #menswatches #quartz #seikocollector #seikodiver #seikofan #seikoholic #seikolover #seikopassion #seikospeedmaster #seikospeedy #vintagewatch #watch #watchaddict #watchcollector #watches #watchfan #watchgeek #watchgram #watchidiotsavant #watchmaking #watchnerd #watchesofinstagram #watchoftheday #watchpassion #watchphotography #watchuseek #wis #wristwatchcheck #wus ....

I just ran Instagram searches on a few of those hashtags and found some have been used on literally millions of posts, which kind of makes a mockery of the whole 'competitive tagging' thing, IMHO.  I won't let myself be drawn into it. 

However, one good thing (or perhaps a bad thing, in the case of users who can't spell, or prone to making typo's) is that Instagram allows you to create your own unique individual hashtags. 

One of my pet hates is the way some people, I suspect because they're either too lazy or unable to remember a watch's correct model number or sales code, give them inappropriate nicknames. One such misnomer which emanted from SCWF and has caught on in a big way is 'Royal Oak' - now almost universally used to describe hype and mis-represent Seiko 7A38-702x's, much in the manner that 'James Bond' is regularly mis-used on just about any 7Axx on eBay. I've railed against it since the outset. The watch looks NOTHING like an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak (chronograph or otherwise). For starters - and for those short-sighted people, who evidently can't count, an AP Royal Oak has an 8-sided bezel (not 12).

So I thought I'd start my own little hashtag campaign: #ThisisNOTaRoyalOak.

Naturally I added it to my first 'test mule' photo of the 7A38-7029. I've also posted it on half a dozen other Instagram users' photos, where they'd written 'Royal Oak'. 

Postcript:

Of course, there's alway some thoughtless tw@t who f*cks it up for everybody.

If heaven forbid, you should try searching Instagram on 7A38, without the hashtag:

Seiko7A38 at July 19, 2020 at 8:25 AM

Anyway, my activity seems to have not gone un-noticed and by the beginning of this week, somehow, still without having uploaded a single photo, I'd managed to attract 80 followers. 

As some readers may have noticed, over the last week or so, I've since uploaded two dozen and more photos to my Instagram page. This resulted in my account finally amassing 100 followers (as of yesterday). Still very small potatoes in the greater scheme of Instagram, I concede, but it was a target that I'd set myself. 

Where I'm still apparently falling down, are in the relatively low numbers of 'Likes' that my photos have attracted so far, say as compared to other similar photos - or dare I say it: what I'd personally consider inferior photos of lesser examples.

The best I've managed so far is 60 on this older photo of my 7A38-7020 Franken.

As can be seen in the right hand column, I've cheated (and lowered my personal standards) by resorting to adding all those irrelevant hashtags that everyone else seemed to be using. Thinking that might be the answer, I'd retrospectively added most of them to the first photo I'd uploaded of my mint-ish 7A38-7029. Result ? An increase of just two more 'Likes' from the previously garnered 50 to 52 !

However, one area where I am succeeding - and this was partly my intention, when I first signed up to Instagram, is in attracting a few new members. The problem remains, however, is that it's much easier for mobile users to upload their photos to Instagram, than it is to remotely host and link them to their posts on this forum. So, despite their presence, I'm not expecting to see any increase in contributions.

Obviously I've got thousands more photos I could upload to Instagram, but I'm not planning to start anytime soon. Indeed, I think I've done enough for the time being. But what I am going to do is rectify some of my earlier rather hasty efforts, where Instagram's automatic default 1:1 format cropping effectively spoiled my uploads.

In fact, I re-did a couple which were particularly bugging me, earlier this afternoon, by manually cropping the original photos to a 1:1 format before uploading them to Instagram. That lesson has been well and truly learned.

For the time being at least, I'm going to leave the previous badly cropped versions on Instagram. Once the newer more centrally cropped versions have received the same number of 'Likes', I'll probably delete the original posts. Deleted - Gone.

Yesterday, I posted this in the 7A38-6000 SAA039J model specific thread ....

Originally posted by myself on September 12, 2020 at 3:28 PM:

Even though I've only been using it for a few months, I think I'm already suffering from Instagram envy. Not necessarily the watches posted by other Instagram users, many of which are in 'lesser' condition than my own examples, nor the quality of their photos, but the much higher numbers of 'Likes' that they're achieving, when compared to my own posts.

Earlier today, Scandinavian (I think he's a Norwegian, living in Denmark) poster Stian (@sand.sti) uploaded another photo of his NOS 7A38-6000. Simply held spread across his fingers, but perfectly focussed and beautifully lit, it's already accumulated over 300 likes !

As it happened, I'd been planning to upload a couple of photos of my 7A38-6000's today, to continue my sequence of posts of the 7A38-60x0 'smaller divers'. I used these two (cropped into 1:1 format), though with hindsight, the wrist shot that I've posted in the WRUW thread would probably have been the better choice.

Yes, I've already figured out for myself that (hashtags apart) the number of 'Likes' received appears to be almost directly proportional to your number of followers, but the fact that my 2 photos on Instagram have so far struggled to reach 30 'Likes' apiece is kind of demotivating. I'm not sure whether I will carry on much longer.

As it's more related to Instagram, I probably should also have written about it here.

By this morning, my Instagram post had finally struggled to reach 50 likes.

By comparison, Stian's post of his 7A38-6000 had already garnered 420 likes !

As I wrote in my previous post, the number of 'Likes' received is clearly related (if not directly proportional) to the number of your followers. At the time of writing, I've managed to attract 150 or so, compared to Stian's 1800 plus - 12 times as many !

Enter an Instagram 'Influencer'. 

I'm not sure about the legitimacy (or ethics, for that matter), but yesterday evening, another Instagram poster, one previously unknown to me, going by the username seiko.club1 with a whopping 17.3k followers, took my photo (without first asking permission, but giving a credit), re-cropped it and re-posted it:

At the time of writing, their re-post of my photo has already exceeded 800 'Likes' !!

Make that 1000+ 'Likes' !! 

Meanwhile, my original photo / post has just managed a mere 60 !

Something is definitely rotten in the state of Denmark Instagram.

Excuse my harping on about Instagram, when there are other more important 'real world' issues that I should be working on, but this is now bordering on ridiculous !

Firstly, that re-post of my 7A38-6000 by seiko.club1 has now garnered 1250 Likes !

That said, it finally appears to be running out of steam. Meanwhile my original post has only managed to creep up from 60 to 63 Likes. 1/20th of the re-poster's tally.

What really p!ssed me off, earlier this morning was when another cheeky b*st*rd - epiccwatches, with a not particularly significant number of followers, decided that he'd like a piece of the action too.

Incredibly stupid of him to have 'stolen' the same photo (credit given regardless).

Needless to say, I strongly objected to my photo being ripped off a second time ....

A matter of seconds later the re-poster complied and removed it. (Hence no link, which I didn't think to save, nor any trace remained, other than my screen prints).

After my initial anger subsided, I decided to look into the legality of what these two Instagram re-posters had done. Instagram's Terms of Use / Service are a bit vague.

Suspecting this might be common practice (it's known as 'Regramming') I googled and found this blog article entitled: The Legalities of Reposting on Instagram

Here's a few extracts from the text:

Evidently to prevent one's photos being 'stolen' and re-posted in the rude manner which mine were, you need to specifically state as much on your Instagram profile. Needless to say, mine has since been edited accordingly.

Seems I was a bit premature in writing that the Instagram re-poster's 'stolen' photo of my 7A38-6000 was 'running out of steam' last week.

1300+ Likes ....

1400+ Likes ....

1500+ Likes ....

1600+ Likes ....

Though I have to say, it struggled to get there over the last couple of days.

Meanwhile, my original photo has finally managed to garner a mere 70 likes.

To say I am distinctly unimpressed is a minor understatement.

Seiko7A38 at September 13, 2020 at 4:03 AM

Yes, I've already figured out for myself that (hashtags apart) the number of 'Likes' received appears to be almost directly proportional to your number of followers, but the fact that my 2 photos on Instagram have so far struggled to reach 30 'Likes' apiece is kind of demotivating. I'm not sure whether I will carry on much longer.

Just a quick update on the current state of my Instagram account. I've persevered with it, though obviously with other more important things (including the future of this forum) on my mind, I haven't exactly given it top priority. My number of followers has increased to 330-odd (still very small potatoes in the greater scheme of things).

But my average number of likes received per post, after 100 or so (total now 107), disappointingly remains below 50. Some have attracted less than 30. There were a few which initially looked promising on the first day, garnering 70, 80 and a couple with 90. But then they fizzled out. Instagram, as its name suggests is all about 'instant gratification'. If your post hasn't attracted the number of likes you'd hoped for after 2 days, it's highly unlikely that it ever will. That hand held shot of my two 7A38-6000's (specifically taken with posting to Instagram in mind) had eventually struggled to reach 98, before stalling - just two short of my first 100.

However, in between Christmas and New Year, a couple of my newer followers took the trouble to scroll through my previous posts. Not many people bother doing that. So to both of them. I finally made it to 100 likes on one photo !!

Well I dunno what I've done to upset them, but I've just been booted off Instagram !

Or should I more correctly say, my account has been disabled (no reason given).

Other than add a couple of comments to posts and give a few likes, I'd hardly done anything with it recently. So having just posted photos of my Cartier Ferrari Formula in the WRUW thread, I thought I'd upload the better of the two to my Instagram, duly pre-cropped to their default square format:

I used the following text as a caption:

Cartier Ferrari Formula Cal. 531. Model ref. F6104882. My newest incoming non-Seiko 7A38, purchased off eBay Germany a week before Christmas and intended as my Xmas present to myself. Unfortunately DHL, presumably acting on instructions from the Federal government, had other ideas and returned it to the seller on Christmas Eve. I was livid. It was finally delivered (in UK) earlier this week - and by some amazing fluke, I didn’t get stung for 20% VAT ! Henceforth to be known as ‘the Brexit watch’.

.... and added the usual raft of hashtags (with one extra):

#7a38 #seiko7a38 #brexit #cal531 #cartier #ferrariformula #ferrarichronograph #seikochronograph #seikochrono #seikovintage #seikoquartzchronograph #seikocollector #seikofan #seikoholic #seikolover #seikopassion #seikospeedmaster #seikospeedy #vintagewatch #watchaddict #watchcollector #watchfan #watchgeek #watchgram #watchidiotsavant #watchesofinstagram #watchoftheday #watchpassion #watchphotography

But as it uploaded, the screen refreshed and informed me that my account had been disabled and asked for my mobile phone number (which previously I had deliberately withheld). Now all I'm seeing is this message.

Is it 'cos I used the B***** word - or the F****** word ? 

Apparently, this problem seems to be a fairly common occurence ....

http://help.instagram.com/366993040048856

Evidently there is an appeals process. 

http://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/instagram-launches-new-appeals-process-for-disabled-accounts-adds-report-t/572122/

Having read just that one paragraph of that article, I'm not sure I'll bother. 

Not relishing the prospect of losing my account, I'll admit I did attempt to request a review, without success. I didn't even get the opportunity. I gave my login details to another Instagram user, whom I trusted, asked him to check and he gave me the bad news that my account had already been deleted - not just disabled.

So that's 108 posts, dozens of comments left on other users' posts, all my DM conversations and 346 followers lost and gone forever - in an instant !  

I sulked for a while, but as I still wanted to keep tabs on this admittedly sometimes useful social media platform, I realized I'd need to create another account. It's not even possible to view other users' posts and photos without one, for starters.

So I quickly relented. My new Instagram account is seiko7a38collector.

I'd created my previous account at the end of last April and got it rolling in July, by uploading some automatically poorly cropped photos of popular models. The order of my 100 or so posts which followed was admittedly somewhat random. This time, I'm going to try to upload them in an orderly fashion, starting with the 7A38-6000 and eventually working my way through to the 7A38-7290, following the original intended ethos of this website: Seiko 7A38 - by the numbers. OCD, Moi ? 

As readers know, I have a penchant for collecting other non-Seiko branded watches using the same 15J quartz caliber. In my previous account, I'd intermingled a fair number of posts of Yema and Jaz N8's, Orient and Racer J39's, Kamatz's, Cartier Ferrari Formula Cal. 531's etc.. They didn't always go down well (judging by the paucity of likes received) and were evidently completely lost on some people.

So at some point, I will create a second separate Instagram account, to post the non-Seiko branded stuff to. I'm still toying with a couple of ideas for a username.