The "lightest" polarized sunglasses?

wrote:
I've been looking at photochromic polarized prescription sunglasses for
awhile now, in my quest to find a polarized prescription lens that I
can wear as late in the day as possible. (In general I like a lot of
light - even in the middle of the day, in shadowed areas I often have
trouble seeing well with sunglasses on.)

I second Jeff T's copper. I wear the prescription bi-focals ,
non-photochromic as my eyeglass prescription is too thick for
comfortable wearing of that type lens.

For awhile I tried clip on sunglasses over my smallish lens hidden
bi-focals. The problem was that in shade they were too dark, and
because they are polarized I had difficulty seeing my tippet to tie
knots. Because they were clipped on (not the flip up type) I couldn't
simply remove them every time I fished in the shade, and had to remove
them at dusk and didn't know what to do with them when I removed them.

So I dug out a very dark, kinda expensive at the time, large lens
flip-up sunglass that fit my very old aviator style glasses. I also
dug out a cheap version of the flip-up style in the same size lens.

Starting with the cheap pair, I mounted the flip-up and traced the
outline of my small lens eyeglasses. I then took a small scissors and
cut out the smaller shape. The edges got a bit rough, but a little
filing and then a swipe with acetone along the edges and I now had a
really small set of flip-ups. The expensive pair was much thicker and
ended up rougher after the same treatment, but with some fine filing
and the acetone swipe they too looked decent, well good enough for
fishing.

At their new size they are very light and flip up when not needed.

Jeff Shafer

Years ago I went to an optician and simply ordered a pair of specs made
up to my prescription with a poliarized coating. They had no other tint
aat all. They weren't cheap but they worked very well. Then of course
some ******* broke into my car and stole them.

Lazarus

--
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Hi Tim,
I would recommend trying the Spotters or any glasses in the actually
situation that you will be using them if that is possible and I think
you will see the difference. I am on board with Spotters as national
pro staff and am more than completely satisfied with their performance.
On the water (ocean) in the conditions we fish here in the northeast I
wear them all day without any eye fatigue. The cripness of what I see
is also amazing and right through the water. I would recommend them
highly for you too, Capt Jim Freda www.shorecatch.com.

wrote:
I've been looking at photochromic polarized prescription sunglasses for
awhile now, in my quest to find a polarized prescription lens that I
can wear as late in the day as possible. (In general I like a lot of
light - even in the middle of the day, in shadowed areas I often have
trouble seeing well with sunglasses on.)

Does anyone know of any side-by-side comparisons for polarized (I'm
assuming photochromic) lenses that allow for the greatest light
transmission, while still doing an effective job of polarizing? Anyone
have any anecdotal info they'd like to share?

At one point, I tried Spotter Shades, which on their website list their
light transmission as high as 50% (whereas usually lenses top out at
25% or so, meaning, 25% of light is allowed through, 75% blocked;
darker lenses are more like 8% transmission). However, when I actually
tried the Spotters on side-by-side with an Action Optics lens that runs
about 20%, they seemed little different.

Up until now I've been using variations of rose-colored glasses, which
for me seem to do allow relatively more light to pass through during
darker parts of the day. (Though maybe, probably, that's just my
perception.) Yellow lenses obviously work great in low light - but
unfortunately they're pretty useless during the middle of the day, I
also generally don't like how drastically they shift colors, and given
the expense of a photochromic polarized prescription lens, I can pretty
much only afford one pair.

FYI - I use these mainly for fishing for trout, in eastern rivers.

I know this is probably ridiculously specific info to ask for, but if
anyone has any input...?

Thanks, Tim

Hi,

Thanks for the replies.

Jim - I did try the spotters, up fishing the in the rivers of the
Catskills. They were perfectly good, I just didn't notice that they
were any lighter (in light transmission) than, say, Action Optics.

(The main problem, really, was that they have no dealer in NYC, and so
it was difficult for me to try out different frames. The sales guys at
Spotters did mail me out a few different pairs to try, which was pretty
amazing customer service I have to say. I just didn't happen to find a
frame that worked for me, and after a while that mailing process became
too laborious.)

So, no knock on Spotters...

Any effective polarized lenses will have a light transmission of no
greater than 50%. That's because they're filtering the horizontal
component of the light. Some manufacturers claim 50% transmission, but I
don't believe it, or if it's true then the polarization is poor. It's
theoretically possible with perfectly polarizing neutral gray lenses,
but not with lenses with any color tint. (That's because the tint would
also filter some of the spectrum of the vertical component.) In
practice, I suspect the best you can hope for is around 30% light
transmission, and even then I doubt that the polarization would be as
effective as is possible with darker lenses.

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Cut "to the chase" for my email address.

In article . net, rw56
says...
Any effective polarized lenses will have a light transmission of no
greater than 50%. That's because they're filtering the horizontal
component of the light. Some manufacturers claim 50% transmission, but I
don't believe it, or if it's true then the polarization is poor. It's
theoretically possible with perfectly polarizing neutral gray lenses,
but not with lenses with any color tint. (That's because the tint would
also filter some of the spectrum of the vertical component.) In
practice, I suspect the best you can hope for is around 30% light
transmission, and even then I doubt that the polarization would be as
effective as is possible with darker lenses.

I don't know the current manufacturing process, but it is at least
theoretically possible that you only filter out light within several
degrees of horizontal. If 0 degrees is purely horizontal, filter 100%
between +5 and -5, but pass 100% everything else.

Again, I don't know what current state-of-the-art is, but you could
build it.
- Ken

wrote:
In article . net, rw56
says...

Any effective polarized lenses will have a light transmission of no
greater than 50%. That's because they're filtering the horizontal
component of the light. Some manufacturers claim 50% transmission, but I
don't believe it, or if it's true then the polarization is poor. It's
theoretically possible with perfectly polarizing neutral gray lenses,
but not with lenses with any color tint. (That's because the tint would
also filter some of the spectrum of the vertical component.) In
practice, I suspect the best you can hope for is around 30% light
transmission, and even then I doubt that the polarization would be as
effective as is possible with darker lenses.


I don't know the current manufacturing process, but it is at least
theoretically possible that you only filter out light within several
degrees of horizontal. If 0 degrees is purely horizontal, filter 100%
between +5 and -5, but pass 100% everything else.

Again, I don't know what current state-of-the-art is, but you could
build it.

You could possibly make such a filter, but it would be a lousy
polarizer. The problem is that it would be passing a substantial amount
of the horizontal component of the light. I wouldn't want to fish with
glasses like that.

--
Cut "to the chase" for my email address.

wrote:
I've been looking at photochromic polarized prescription sunglasses for
awhile now, in my quest to find a polarized prescription lens that I
can wear as late in the day as possible. (In general I like a lot of
light - even in the middle of the day, in shadowed areas I often have
trouble seeing well with sunglasses on.) ...

I hate sunglasses but wear them, so I wanted minimum light loss.
The best I found were Action Optiocs photoc/polar/prescr amber.
I also had the copper at one point; I think that the amber block
less light.

Greg - Do you find that the amber coloring bothers you - just in terms
of the extreme color shift? Or is it not quite so "yellow" as some of
them?