Watches, Stories, & Gear: New Cameras, Passport Redesign and A Successfull Splashdown

“Watches, Stories, and Gear” is a roundup of our favorite content, watch or otherwise, from around the internet. Here, we support other creators, explore interesting content that inspires us, and put a spotlight on causes we believe in. Oh, and any gear we happen to be digging on this week. We love gear.

An Updated Swiss Passport

For anyone who has, or plans to travel abroad, you know just how important your passport is.  Arguably the most important piece of gear for world travelers, this book allows you to get in, and out of your destination, and more importantly allows you to return home. While each country has their own, unique design and style, Switzerland has just announced their newest look, reimagined by Geneva based design agency RETINAA. While the new look is stunning and eye-catching, it’s packed full of security features like watermarks, UV-reactive illustrations, and many more undisclosed elements.  For one of the world’s most powerful passports, it’s only fitting that it has an equally powerful design.

The Fujifilm GFX100RF: An Overly Ambitious Compact Camera

In 2023, Fujifilm released the X100vi, a new addition to their X100 series of compact cameras. This model became so popular that it’s still on backorder, over two years after its initial release. Not one to settle with this level of success, Fujifilm has announced a new model, the GFX100RF,  a slightly bigger but exponentially more powerful “sibling” to the X100vi.  This new camera combines Fuji’s larger medium format sensor (from their GFX line) and the X100VI’s “compact” body size to create an absolute powerhouse of a camera that has a fixed 35mm lens with a max aperture of F/ 4, and a whopping 102 megapixel sensor. While these specs are quite impressive, it comes with two distinct trade offs: its size and cost. The new GFX100RF is a bit larger than the X100 series, a small price to pay for over double the image resolution, but retails for $4,899 USD.  Impressive as this camera may be on paper, we can’t help but wonder just how it will compete with the Leica Q series…

Cannon Teases Something New

 

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If one camera wasn’t enough, Canon has begun teasing a new model on their social media this week. From the images we’ve seen, it appears to be a compact, point and shoot style camera, something that Canon users have been asking for due to the popularity of the Fuji X100’s, Ricoh GRiii’s, and Sony Cybershot.  While we don’t know much at the moment, we’ll be keeping an eye out for the official announcement on 3/26/25.

An Overdue Return and A Successful Splashdown

In June of 2024, Sunita Lyn “Suni” Williams, and Barry Eugene “Butch” Wilmore set out on a mission to test Boeing’s Starliner.  While originally planned to be a two-week test mission, it would ultimately become the start of a 9 month expedition. In an effort to make the best of the situation, Butch and Suni completed over 150 unique experiments, 900 hours of combined research, and Suni now holds the record for “total spacewalking time by a female astronaut” (62 hours, 6 minutes). Splashing down on the 18th, the pair spent a total of 286 days in space and circled Earth 4,576 times. 

“One Battle After Another”

The countdown is on for the next film from Paul Thomas Anderson. Ever since his latest project was announced, there’s been a great deal of speculation as to what exactly the director behind Boogie Nights and There Will Be Blood was up to. PTA isn’t exactly known for giving the general public a ton of info on what his movies are about beforehand. He films largely in secret, and has even been known to change titles at the last minute (Licorice Pizza was known as “Soggy Bottom” throughout much of it’s production). The new film, which presumably has a final title of One Battle After Another, has been particularly confounding. It’s reportedly budgeted at well over $100 million, a huge sum for Anderson, and was shot in IMAX (also a first for PTA). The Leonardo DiCaprio starring film has been rumored to be based on Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, but there’s just no way to know from the short teaser released this week. Regardless, we’re pretty excited to see more from PTA, and we should be able to once the full trailer hits the Internet later this week.

The Micra’s Fresh Look

The Micra: one of Leatherman’s most compact and popular mini-tool has received a fresh, new look for 2025. Now available in 4 new cerakoted color-ways, the Micra features 10 unique tools inside of the compact package. Weighing in at 1.8 ounces, the Micra is perfectly sized to be carried on a set of keys, in a bag, or even that little 5th pocket in your jeans.