new glasses (1 Viewer)

Hi all the time has come for new glasses and I would like to
Get a pair for birding. I have been looking at Polaroid lens, are they
any good with bins and scopes ect.
Also what is the favourite design for uses with optics?
Any Suggestions would be appreciated

A belated response:
Glasses are a bother while birding. They get dirty easily and catch every raindrop, plus they do not play well with binoculars or scopes, because these latter rarely have enough eye relief to show the full field to a glasses wearer. We consequently often get the proverbial "view through a straw". Still, assuming you are too prudent for Lasik and not willing to wear contacts, then some normal glasses are quite compatible with other optics.
The primary suggestion would be to get a frame, metal or plastic, that rests directly on your nose, rather than any type that relies on a couple of small nosepads.
The binocs etc will push on the glasses and the small pads are not designed for that.
Do note however that some birders instead just push up their glasses with a finger as they raise their binocs to their eyes, so if you are comfortable with that approach, you stay flexible.
Polaroid lenses cut light, so they are not always welcome. A cheap set of flip up clip-ons is probably the most useful, but not the most stylish.

One problem with birding with glasses is that it's quite difficult to get any that aren't the new, trendy, narrow rectangular style. They make look cool, but they can be a real pain if you're trying to look through a scope at a difficult angle.

I ended up buying a pair of John Lennon specs. The small, round, lenses can fit very close to the face (mitigating the eye-relief problem) and the frames don't get in the way when the scope is at an akward angle.

They weren't easy to find (could only get them online) and they weren't very cheap. But they are my favourite birding specs.

Oh - and the way fashions cycle, I'm expecting them to become trendy again sometime in the future. Then you can impress your friends as a style-setter rather than follower.

I'd rather use my eyes to view througha scope, bins, camera so I wear flexiframe glasses.These are easily pushed up onto your head and generally seem to stay there although I'm always cautious when leaning over water! Not perfect but they have made life a bit easier.

Glasses have improved considerably over the past 10 years.

High index (thin) lenses and anti-glare coatings make a real difference. The anti-glare coatings drastically reduce reflections back off binoculars and scopes in addition they also tend to disperse rain droplets (a baseball cap is also very effective). After wearing glasses with anti-glare coatings going back to an old pair is like looking through a dirty window.

Personally I would avoid polaroid or any other lens that reduce the amount of light entering the eye however I suspect you get far more sunshine than we do up here. Looking for Owls or Nightjars with Polaroids could be a problem.

I tend to have that go darker in the sun with anti glare coating and always glass lenses. I used to have the same but plastic lenses for use on my motorbike after having glass ones smashed in my eye by a lump of gravel at 80mph (sorry officer) luckily it didn't cut my eyeball. One thing I have noticed about the anti-glare coating is they sometimes go cloudy/streaky over time? anyone else had this problem?
Cheers
Brian

Claymore said:

One thing I have noticed about the anti-glare coating is they sometimes go cloudy/streaky over time? anyone else had this problem?
Cheers
Brian

Click to expand...

First time I tried the anti-glare coating every time I got a finger print on them I washed them with a drop of fairy liquid under the hot water tap. After 3 months I noticed the coating was breaking down and taking on a crazy paving effect. Fortunately my optician replaced them free of charge.

Since then I've been far more careful however I agree the coating does deteriorate over time (probably something to do with thousands of microscopic scratches from polishing the lenses). Ultimately I think with any plastic lens its inevitable they're going to need replacing every two to three years. £1.00/£1.50 per week over a couple of years is a small price to pay. Certainly less expensive than new bins or a scope!

What you had there was thermal shock, caused by the early coatings having a vastly different rate of expansion to the base material. The lens expands more than the coating causing the coating to break down over time.
All multi-coated lenses should be cleaned with dedicated cleaners and not hot water, even the very latest coating still expand at a different rate to the base material, for this reason any good optician will advise you not to leave your spectacles on the dash in your car on a very sunny day, not to run them under hot water and most definitely not to boil them to sterilise them. That last one is my own favourite, had one person try and claim that his spectacless were faulty because the lenses crazed after he boiled them, he'd dropped them into a cow-pat and wanted to make sure that he didn't catch anything. So he popped them into a saucepan full of water and boiled them up.

ikw101 said:

First time I tried the anti-glare coating every time I got a finger print on them I washed them with a drop of fairy liquid under the hot water tap. After 3 months I noticed the coating was breaking down and taking on a crazy paving effect. Fortunately my optician replaced them free of charge.

Click to expand...

I second the comments concerning thin lens. They work fine for me and my usual problem looking through bins is too much eye relief not too little.

Glasses are a pain in the rain and can be a pain in pelagic birding. I have no solution here.