# 40 Smokey Sunset

Today's article is a bit different. First I didn't take the pictures,except for the EL-backlight, the fruit basket and wrist shots. Second, because I got this watch actually by mistake. One of my pupils recently bought the successor of my camera, the Canon D450. She has the past 6 years shown much interest in my watch- and T-Shirt collection. Escha has asked me for photography tips several times, so I asked her to do the photo's for this article with my camera. It took two sessions to make photo's I could use. Most photo's of the first session were not sharp at the right places. A bit my fault too, because I use many personal settings. I think she did a good job for a beginner. The Smokey Sunset, as this DW-9005V-8AV is called in Germany is a European only model. As it is both present in my 1999 "Tough Stuff" and my 2002 catalog, it was sold for a pretty long period. Although it is a basic model, you might consider it a part of a series of three. There were also a navy (-2V, Heavenly High) and a black (-8BV, Cosmoxer) model.
When I bought my first G-Shock, I did not had internet. Also the new science wing of the school I worked did not have a network connection. Between lessons I descended into the building foundation and made network connections for the whole wing.
Of course I went looking for G-Shocks. I found an on-line jeweler that was located in Breda. The opening page showed several G-Shocks. The most eye catching was a dark model, with a negative display. "That's the one I want" I thought. I saved up money for this watch for about two, three months.
When I finally had the money together, I called the store (it must have been December 2000). A friendly man answered the phone. Yes, they did sell G-Shocks, but the one with the negative display? That one was sold ages ago. It was only a promotional stock photo, to show what they were selling.
Bummer. Luckily I found this watch at Megatime in Germany. I never learned proper German, but with a dictionary and my instinct, I managed to buy this watch. If I'm correct it was DM180,- for the watch and DM25.- shipping. A total of €102,50 does unfortunately nowadays not sound very expensive, but it was a lot of money those days.
Finally it arrived about a week later. It looked nice, but the watch was navy blue... Not quite my favorite color. I always thought the watch I saw was black.
Soon I found out there was a black variant. It was called "Cosmoxer". I discovered eBay Germany, and soon I found this dream watch. I also was amazed about the prices. There were hardly G-Shocks over DM 100,- (€50,-). I think I payed around DM 75,- for a brand new "Cosmoxer". Since an international bank transfer took about 4 days, it was a long, long wait. Finally, about two weeks later, my grail package arrived.
I was very excited. My dream watch. Finally. The box was sealed pretty well, but after some careful cutting I got at the black G-Shock box. Inside this box was the well known hexagonal G-Shock nut-box. So I opened the box and what did I find.
Something completely different from what I expected actually. In stead of a black G, this was creamy white. It did not look bad at all and frankly I wasn't disappointed at all. Actually it took years before I bought my first Cosmoxer.
The "Smokey Sunset" is a kind of special DW-9000 model. All DW-90XX models (for XX read 05, 50 or 52) share the same case. The DW-9000 case is characterized by the protected buttons and the four metal decoration pins around the display.
The functions on the DW-9005V are the basic alarm functions, a stopwatch and a countdown timer. The display is divided in three parts and an eye. The middle part animates the seconds, while the eye shows the 10 seconds. These animations are comparable in function as the seconds hand on an analog watch.
The negative display looks very cool. Actually it is not difficult to realize this kind of display. Therefore you need to know a bit how an LCD display works.
Liquid Crystal (often a kind of cholesterol derivate) has the ability to turn polarize light. When an electric potential is applied, the crystal will turn polarized light by 90 degrees (with certain thickness and potential). Now the polarized light cannot pass through the polarizing film again, which we see as a black. If a pattern is made of liquid crystals with very thin electrodes, you get digits. Under these digits there is a reflective layer (often a kind of green or grey) to make these digits clearly visible.
If the polarized filter is turned 90 degrees, light will not pass the filter in ground state. If now a potential is applied, light passes the digit. We now can see the back reflector, which is more or less white, hence the white digits on a negative display.
Negative displays look very cool, but are a bit harder to read under an angle. While normal digits stick out above the reflective layer, a negative display is more or less a black layer with small holes (digits) in it. Only light that passes these digits reach the back reflector, while on a normal display all light fall on the reflector except where the digits are.
This model has a double Velcro watchband. The under band is pretty thin and not elastic. Still this watch wears very comfortable. Because of the cream color and the black display, this is quite a nice looker on a sunny day.