Grey tint flat light lenses

[Zirbl]

Now and again people post here saying they can't get on with yellow or pink flat light lenses. Just seen 100% do a couple of flat light lenses with a grey tint. Thought I'd drop a heads-up for anyone interested while asking for myself - has anyone tried em?

 

[dj61]

Grey will not work. You need a color to enhance contrast.

 

[fundad77]

Grey will not work. You need a color to enhance contrast.

Seriously, yellow is the way to go. Wearing them now on sunny days too except at the highest of altitudes.

 

[Henry]

...the yellow family – very light brown to amber to yellow to orange to orange-red. The reason is because overcast days create a lot of “blue light,” light from the bluish stage of the light spectrum. Yellow is the opposing light filter and ideal for the blue light of hazy, cloudy days. Because they’re so good at filtering out blue light, yellow lenses have an added benefit in low-light conditions: visual acuity and contrast will be noticeably sharpened. Blue light often creates a dull, hazy aura, and with a yellow lens to filter it out while still taking advantage of every bit of available incoming light, vision will seem brighter and clearer. https://rx-safety.com/2014/01/what-lens-color-is-best-for-overcast-days/

So bring some light gray sunglasses on that cloudy day and see how they work for you. As my eyes have aged my lens color preference has changed from amber or pink to only amber to now only yellow. Everyone's eyes are different. Lens color preference varies as does lens density. It's a voyage of exploration to find what works for some of us.

 

[Zirbl]

So bring some light gray sunglasses on that cloudy day and see how they work for you.

Would be the obvious thing to do, but cat. 1 grey lenses aren't particularly common - which is why these piqued my interest. As did the company's claims of a snow-specific filter given that they're not using the usual dyes.

Besides, most snow lenses have long moved on from filtering blue light in all wavelengths.

It's a voyage of exploration to find what works for some of us.

Yep, and an expensive one.

 

[cantunamunch]

Would be the obvious thing to do, but cat. 1 grey lenses aren't particularly common - which is why these piqued my interest.

Depp v. Heard strikes in unexpected ways?

But seriously, they're all over the place in things like cycling visors, often as the only lens on offer.

As did the company's claims of a snow-specific filter given that they're not using the usual dyes.

You know, that almost screams intensity-based filtering and power laws. And the first thing one thinks of there is ...

Beer–Lambert law - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

So any high-mu filter would by default be snow specific because reflections off snow are so much higher intensity than any other.

Yep, and an expensive one.

You can dip your toe by going nordic - the really cheap way to see if it works for you.

 

[Zirbl]

Very intersting, thanks for the info @cantunamunch .

 

[Zirbl]

@cantunamunch , you who are wise in the ways of science, perhaps you know the answer to what remains mystery to me.
Zeiss say of their Sonar and Clarity lenses, orange and pink respectively, that they peak at blue around 400 nm, suppress cyan and green, and peak again at red and orange. Oakley Prizm, same. On that basis, I would expect a green lens to suppress shorter-wave-length blues, oranges and reds and allow in cyan and yellow, peaking at green in between. But not so according to this transmission curve for Scott's new Amp Pro green lens:

Transmission Curves | SCOTT Winter

celum.ssg-service.com

Three questions. 1. Is my premise flawed? 2. How does a Scott Amplifier lens allow a peak at green and not just at blue and orange if its tint is pink like a Clarity or Prizm lens? 3. Is there more to selective filtering of wave lengths than the colour of the dye if a green lens can allow peaks for all colours while suppressing the transitions in between? (That is, would all green lenses have a similar curve to the Scott Amp Pro, or are they doing something different?)

 

[cantunamunch]

I don't know which specific dyes they use to do the filtering but do notice something weird about our eyes'
sensitivity to green:

Notice that huge overlap at the upper end of the red/green response? I think just that alone goes a long way to answer your #2.

Other implications of that tight clustering are:
- a lens that looks truly green to us is likely to be dim whereas high transmittance lenses with similar filtering will be orangish or pink
- lenses that look truly green to us have the broadest variety of methods they might use to achieve that goal (two lens companies might show quite different peaks so long as the centroid is around that 520nm mark)

and that's even before we consider the psychological effects.

It's a bit of a weasely answer and I apologise for that. I don't have specifics on the Scott Amplifier.

 

[Zirbl]

It's a bit of a weasely answer and I apologise for that.

Better than I could come up with, thanks very much.

Notice that huge overlap at the upper end of the red/green response? I think just that alone goes a long way to answer your #2.

I don't have specifics on the Scott Amplifier.

It's a rose lens a nuance closer to violet than an Oakley Prizm. I can see how that would move it over towards that green peak in your graph, but by that logic, a Poc Clarity Comp violet lens would have to have that peak, and apparently it doesn't. It has the same long trough that Sonar and Prizm display.

I know what works for me, having had the opportunity to try all the lenses I've mentioned, apart from the Amp Pro green, in the same conditions, as much as they ever stay the same from one minute to the next. Understanding my preferences isn't essential, but would be nice. It's particulalry odd that Sonar and Prizm presentations show basically the same spectral curve, yet I find one to work better than anything I've tried, and the other to be among the worst.