The "lightest" polarized sunglasses?

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.

--
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.