G-Shock #6: G-Shock for the outdoor enthusiasts

In March 2011 Casio released the GDF-100. It’s a remarkable looking watch. Although the GDF-100 has adopted the strap style of the new X-Large series, the case of the watch somehow does remind me more to the vintage Skyforce models, probably because of the asymmetric shape, caused by the sensor on the left side of the case.

If Casio would have brought a 2nd generation Riseman around 2000, it probably would have looked like this. And the Riseman was the first model that comes to my mind when I heard about this new twin sensor model. With the revival of the Master of G line, now even regenerating of the new models combined with the trend of bigger G-Shock models, it would not have been strange if Casio had called this model the new Riseman, probably even with a new G(W)-9400 model number. Casio did not choose for this approach, but I think it would not be strange to compare this watch to the G-9200 Riseman.

Two basic models were introduced worldwide, a black version with orange lettering and accents and reversed display with amber digits and this “Crimson Red” version, also with a negative display and black accents and lettering. I have a weakness for red models so I bought the red version, but frankly, the black version looks also great.

While, as far as I know, all sensors found on Casio watches are located at the side, the sensors are facing to the front of the GDF-100. You can recognize the sensors as the four little black (on this model) points on the protrusion on the left.

On a good barometric watch, you always find a thermometer. Barometric sensors can be very accurate, but the readout not only depends on the atmospheric pressure, but also on the environmental temperature (temperature drift). If you know the temperature of the sensor, you can compensate the temperature drift of the barometric sensor.

There are some notable differences between the G-9200 Riseman and the GDF-100. You would probably not notice at immediately, but the GDF-100 is controlled by only 4 buttons and the G-9200 is controlled by no less than 6 buttons. This is not really a big problem, as the original DW-9100 Riseman was also controlled by 4 buttons. I think if you look at the front side of the watch for the first time, you might wonder: “4 buttons? But I see a light button”. It is indeed a bit strange. There is no upper right button. Instead there is a little raised structure that looks a bit like the sensor. It seems not to have any function.

Actually the missing upper right button makes it a little different to operate. Sometimes the light button takes over the function that you might expect from the upper right button, like scrolling backwards. Personally I rather would have seen a classic 4 button control of the functions and optional the light button as the 5th button. The 6 button control of the G-9200 is a little over the top I guess. The lower right button is also used for direct access to the Altimeter from Timekeeping Mode.

Another visual thing missing on the GDF-100 is the Barograph. The GDF-100 has a “Trend Graph”. It’s the round graphic area on the top right of the display. In Barometer mode, it will display the “Barometric Pressure Differential Pointer”, which shows the trend of the barometric pressure, compared to the last measured point. When the Barometer function is activated on the GDF-100, it starts reading the barometric pressure every 5 seconds for the first 3 minutes and from then one reading every two minutes. The readings on the Altimeter function are the same. I had to deep out the G-9200 manual (module 3148) and compare it on the 3255 module of the GDF-100. On the Riseman the barometer keeps reading every 5 seconds after the function in activated. The Altimeter can be set to every 5 seconds or every 2 minutes updating.

Taking barometric readings (both the Barometer function as the Altimeter functions use barometric readings) consumes energy from the battery. I think the frequent updating of the barometric readings on the Riseman is not a real problem, as the watch is Tough Solar, which means it can store a lot of energy in it’s rechargeable battery, and can be recharged time after time again, while the GDF-100 uses a conventional battery. Casio was smart enough to equip this watch with the CR2025 battery, which can hold much more energy than the usual CR2016, though Tough Solar would have been better, but also more expensive.

The Altimeter function does calculate the altitude with the barometric changes. This means the barometric sensor is very sensitive. It can detect altitude changes of 5 meters, which is the accuracy of the readings. Although Casio promoted this watch with a spectacular “Decent” video, the 5m increments and the 2 minutes measuring intervals (after 3 minutes) are probably not useful for parachutists and other people who need an accurate and fast altimeter. The Altimeter function is a fine tool for hikers, skiers and snowboarders, who want to keep track of their altitude. I think the 5m increments are fine for these sports. If you really need a good altimeter, you can look out for a Suunto, but such an Altimeter of course has it’s price.

Note that the Altimeter function accuracy, how expensive your Altimeter watch might be, needs a stable Barometric pressure. If there are severe weather changes on the way, the barometric pressure might drop fast, causing very inaccurate readouts. Also note that you have to adjust the altitude of your Altimeter, before you are going to use it. I have seen owners asking why their Altimeter was so much off. Well, in all cases the owner did not know how a barometric Altimeter worked.

What other functions do you find beside the Barometer and Altimeter function on the GDF-100. The watch has a World Time mode with 31 time zones and 48 cities to choose from, a 24 hour Stopwatch function, a 24 hour Countdown Timer and an Alarm function with 5 alarms and a hourly chime. A nice thing is that the time is always visible in the upper display in every function (except Timekeeping function of course).

Compared with the G-9200 the GDF-100 has less functionality. There is no recorder function, it is not Tough Solar and there is Barograph, only a barometric trend indicator. If you are a fan of the 90’s look, you probably will love the GDF-100 over the G-9200. The visibility on the G-9200 is okay, but the digits in the main display and the seconds display are relative big and very good readable, even though it's a negative display.

If you look around good, you’ll see that prices for both the G-9200 as the GDF-100 vary a lot, though, the Tough Solar feature and better functions on the Riseman pay off. I do not know the retail prices for the G-9200, as it is not released in the US and Europe (we had the Waveceptor version GW-9200), but a basic Riseman can be found already for around €120.-. The recommended retail price f the GDF-100 is in Europe €139.-, but if you look around well, you’ll find them for much lower prices than you’ll find the a basic Riseman. I found mine in Singapore for €85.-, which is probably not the lowest, but a great price. For that price the GDF-100 is worth it’s money compared to the Riseman.

#34 Love The Sea And The Earth Riseman

 In June 2010 Casio released the second G-Shock model in the Love The Sea And The Earth series. This time it comes in a very unique color, pink. At first sight the color pink does not refer to the sea or the earth, but on second thought, if you look for color variations tables for pink, you’ll notice that there are several shades named after flowers, like carnation pink and cherry blossom pink. In a lot of countries the name of the color pink is directly derived from the rose.

When thinking about an environmental organization, you probably think first about the color green. The First Love The Sea And The Earth model was the green “Kermit” Frogman. In January 2010 Casio released the Green Color models, but these are not related to the Love The Sea And The Earth theme.

 

The shade of pink of this GW-9200KJ-4JR Riseman is a bit hard to describe. It’s even harder to catch the right shade in the photos. I use halogen lights, that emit pretty yellow light. Although I have “white” the white balance of my camera, there is a noticeable difference in the un-edited photos. I have tried to adjust the colors in the right shade. I have compared the color with the “Variations in Pink” table of Wikipedia. The color seems to be between Cherry Blossom Pink and Brick Pink (HEX = #FB607F, ), though the color seems to vary a bit in direct and indirect daylight.

The shade of pink is totally different from the other recent pink G-Shock models. I think you can best describe this color more pastel, though pink is actually a pastel color (a color mixed with white).

 My Riseman with my new G-Shock Camera (Casio Exilim EX-G1)

I visited a lecture by the Bas Haring, a well known Dutch scientist and philosopher, who told the audience in a bridge to another subject, that pink is an odd color. You have green and light green. You have yellow and light yellow, you have blue and light blue, but there is not red and light red. We call light red pink. Actually that is not 100% right, because pink is a covering name in all shades of light red and magenta.

Before 1920 pink was a masculine color. Pink is quite a strong color. Light blue was for girls. In history pink was even the color of the French Royalty.

While it was “not done” to wear pink clothes for a man after the 2nd world war, a few years ago there seems to be a change. When I was in a small French village in the South of France 2 years ago, I noticed a long man (around 1.90) in a pink polo shirt. Eva, my girlfriend was poking on my side and said: I’ll bet you, those must be Dutch people. Since then I saw more men wear pink shirts.

Somehow, I think that man wearing pink are pretty strong characters. Pretty much like before 1920. I wouldn’t mind that, because I think pink is a cool color.

Still, this Riseman has a different shade as the DW-6900FS-4, DW06900CS-4 and the GA-110B-4. These models have a pretty strong pink color, while this Riseman has a more softer tone. I pretty much think it’s not a color that I want to wear, though the watch itself looks great.

 The GW-9200KJ-4JR comes in a special cardboard box of recycled cardboard, all in the line of Earth Watch. On the box there is the logo for Love The Sea And The Earth 2010 and the motto: “Change the World Yourself”. The motto returns also on the strap of the Riseman, the logo is also printed on the back of the watch.

In the Backlight of the watch the logo of Earthwatch, the organization that is sponsored by Casio. A percentage of the sales go to this organization. Eartwatch is a charity international environmental organization that do research, promotion, and education about life on Earth and how to act to maintain a sustainable environment. Earthwatch has been founded in 1971 and has offices in Oxford (UK), Boston (USA), Melbourne (Australia) and Tokyo (Japan).

 Still I do not link pink to an environmental organization. I have other associations to the color pink. First thought when this watch arrived was the old television series “Operation Petticoat”. The submarine staring in this series has the same shade of pink. Fun detail about that sub. The pink color was a result of not having enough lead paint in white or in red for the whole ship, so they mixed all the paint, so there was enough for the ship. Because a sudden attack, there was no time to give the submarine the final gray layer. This story was actually based on real event.

Another association I thought of, when I saw this watch, was the Pink Panther. One look at it and you can hear Henri Mancini’s Pink Panther theme. That reminds me that I have to look for some old Pink Panther movies for Bram, though he might not understand the funny French accent of Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau (“Thire’s a car in yur pewl”).

Alright, a last association. One of my favorite beers is from the brewery Huyge in Melle, near Ghent. It is the Delirium Nocturnal. A heavy dark beer with a little fruity flavor. Unfortunately the beers of the Delirium range are banned from the US and Canada, because the name should encourage excessive alcohol abuse. The logo for the Brewery and the Delirium range of beers is a pink elephant. I love the glass, as it shows a lot of small pink elephants. It is said that one sees pink elephants when you have drunken too much beers.

When you first see the color of this Riseman, you’ll soon notice the colors on the display too. Casio uses two toned displays before, but this watch has three tones. While the main time display is pretty usual bluish gray, the upper (day and date) display is amber. The small barometer eye is green. Pretty remarkable, but I like how it’s done.

This Riseman is a Japan Domestic model. This means it has the 3145 module, instead of the 3147 module. This means the watch can only display height, barometric pressure and temperature in SI units. It has something to do with the history between the US and Japan.

Personally, as I have studied Clinical Chemistry, with a lot of physics in it, I think the use of imperial should have replaced by the much more logical metric system. Therefore I am right behind the USMA. Why use a ammonium chloride (salmiac, sal ammoniac) mixture to reach 0ºF and the mouth of your wife to determine 96ºF (later corrected to 98.6ºF).

Celcius just used more easy ways to calibrate a thermometer. He just defined melting ice in water 0ºC and boiling water 100ºC. I remember that when I visited New York in 1997, I was amazed by the weather forecast. It was going to be 100 degrees! I had no idea how warm that was, but I’m afraid if that was in my country, it would have been very lethal. Luckily we had air conditioning in our hotel.

Also calculating in powers of 10 is much easier. In ancient times we learned we have 10 fingers, which is the base of the decimal system. If humans were creatures with four fingers on each hand, we probably were very good in calculating in an octal system. Those who know me for my signature on the G-Shock forum, “There are only 10 kinds of people. Those who understand binary and those who don’t”, probably know I have a fascinations for numeral systems.

Let’s go back to the Riseman. The basic functions on the watch, a 24 hour Countdown Timer, a 24 Hour Stopwatch, World Time (comes automatically with the 6 band Atomic Time keeping) are of course good, but not the key features of this model. The GW-9200 is the successor of the DW-9100 Riseman and comes also with a barometric and thermo senor. Well, this does not explain the name of this Master of G, but you can calculate relative altitudes with changes of barometric pressure. Of course this only works in barometric stable weather conditions. If you can calibrate your Riseman to a known altitude, the Altimeter function is quite reliable.

There is one thing I miss on this new Riseman. The old version had a very good recorder function. If you started a recording with the DW-9100, it records every 30 minutes the altitude and the temperature. Since I live in a flat country, the Altimeter only is interesting for me on vacation. The thermometer recording function can be interesting to use for tracking changes. I used it often at my camp sites, to see how cold it was at night. The GW-9200 does not record the temperature with the altitude. Also does it not record altitudes automatically during a recording. You have to input them yourself. It only calculates the minimum and maximum altitude and the cumulative ascent and Descent values.

You might think why on Earth put a thermometer on a wristwatch. It seems illogic, since the temperature of the watch is heavily affected by body heat when worn. You can’t compensate for body heat, because the effect of the body heat is effected by the outdoor temperature, your activities, long sleeves or short sleeves, etc. There are simply too much factors to compensate. The Thermometer function is actually pretty accurate. When taken off, the watch will show the correct temperature in about 20 minutes.

A very important reason why a thermometer can be found on a good watch with a barometric function is that it measures the temperature of the barometric sensor. The output of the barometric sensor is not only dependant for barometric pressure, but, unfortunately, also dependent on the temperature of the sensor. You can eliminate this temperature drift, if the temperature of the sensor is known.

 

This Riseman model was available at the end of June. I received mine on July 4th. I bought it at Higuchi-inc. Due to the bad Euro/Yen rate, it was quite an expensive purchase. I paid around €215 for it, but compared with the ¥30000 suggested retail price(€278 without VAT) , it was still a very good price.

You might ask me if I intend to wear this watch. I love to wear pink G-Shock’s, like I like to wear other colored G-Shocks too (except blue for some reason). Still I think I let this Riseman in his box, just for the collection. The shade of pink does not appeal to me as I like the more stronger pink colors of the Crazy Colors and Hyper colors model. Maybe I even think that this pink tone might be more feminine. I like it when women are wearing big watches (I think I like it generally when people are wearing big watches), so no doubt that this Riseman would be looking great when it is worn by a sportive woman.