We should be wearing sunglasses throughout the day and especially while kiteboarding! Why aren't we?

[mede]

Check out these glasses:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Detacha ... 53519.html

You can get them in all tints you like, just message the seller.
They are great, cause they have the silicon spacers for where they touch your face, and the strap so you don't loose them.
Ways more comfy than the seaspecs I wore before ...

[PullStrings]

If it is too hard to see through polycarbonate lenses, then why are safety glasses used in:
1. construction (often at heights while walking on narrow ledges)
2. factory assembly (where accuracy and placement are extremely important)
3. machining (where detail is extremely important)

What the heck does anti scratch coating actually protect against? Will it actually stop a piece of sand on your wiping cloth from scratching the surface? How about if you drop them on gravel or concrete? How is the light that made it to the inside of the glasses on close wrap style glasses (like my safety glasses) too hard for someone to possibly see through?

You get poor vision looking through clear polycarbonate that has no anti-reflective treatment on both sides of the lenses
If you were to buy safety glasses with AR treatment you would not be looking through a veil of glare and reflections
Print...colors... all will appear as it you were looking through no lenses at all...all bright and sharp... like having no glasses on
You would never want to wear your El Cheapo
On sunglasses polycarbonate the most common is mirror on front of the lenses and non-reflective on the back

Poly is the safest material to protect the eyes but has a lot of reflectance nearly 10% which impairs vision....but with 2 sided AR reflectance drops to 0.5%
Next it has a very low Abbe value of 30 which means a very high amount of chromatic dispersion....think of a prism that bends white light into its colors

Yes sand on a cloth wiped across the lens surface of a hardcoated lenses if quite unlikely to scratch it
But nothing if scratch proof... not even glass.. the most scratch resistant material
But if dropped it will pock marked and get damaged....does not protect against that

Light will make it to the back of your curved wrap glasses if there is even just a gap of two millimeter...it will reflect back to the eye veiling your sight
Makes it harder to see
Listen do what you want
Just know that if you want to see as if you are not looking through lenses at all....clarity just like your naked eyes... then you know what to do
The reason vision is so great with contact lenses is because they rests against the eyes and light reflected from the back of lenses does not exist





School's out....for now

[TomW]

Are you saying that contact lenses protect against UV?

[Matteo V]

School's out....for now

Goodness Gracious Me! I knew this day would come. But I never thought it would be from "pulley". He has presented apparent facts, reasoning, and logic, in a pretty calm and collected manner without resorting to any personal attacks or blatant displays of frustration. I must "tip my hat" to pulley! It is just so strange to be on this side of the argument. And I have only one thing to add.

Poly is the safest material to protect the eyes but has a lot of reflectance nearly 10% which impairs vision....but with 2 sided AR reflectance drops to 0.5%

I am assuming that you can use light measuring instruments to determine the validity of the above claims, as well as pretty much all of the other numerical/statistical values pulley has presented. This naturally would lead one to believe that if one falls down while wearing "el cheapo/you are not spending enough money" sunglasses, then that fall was due to the cheap glasses. So what if I do not fall down?

I do know something about human vision. And that is that our eyes ONLY GATHER information. The brain ACTUALLY INTERPRETS it. And as you know right now from reading this, while you can see the whole screen on which these words appear, your brain is not actually registering what is going on a sentence before or after this - let alone what exists in the margins. So what counts is what the brain is focused on and interpreting at the time. All of this inside reflectance (9.5% more in my sunglasses than in pulleys), at least for me and countless others, is of no consequence because the brain ignores it. If the brain could not cope with that additional reflectance, I guess we would just fall a bunch more.

So again, you can measure with millions of dollars of instruments, come up with 100 coatings to put on lenses to justify charging $200 for sunglasses, and talk endlessly about the physics involved. But in the end, what is the result?.......You just paid $200 for some plastic that you will loose, break, scratch, or otherwise ruin. I am not against that, but I like to call things as they are. I am still going to continue to use my $1 sunglasses, that I have been using for 10+ years. Though now, I am going to start to question if it was my sunglasses that made me read the wave wrong. Better yet, I can use it as an excuse for falling down - "I SWEAR I FELL DOWN BECAUSE I USE CHEAP SUNGLASSES!" And you too, pulley, can question whether it was that .05% of reflectance in your $200 sunglasses that made you fall down.

And thanks, pulley, for your tenacity, calm and collected responses, and belief that you are "doing it right" and "everyone else is wrong". I am going to have to concede, at least to some degree, and say that "I am doing it.....adequate.......with a cost savings of $199".

[jakemoore]

Are you saying that contact lenses protect against UV?

There are contact lenses and lens implants that have UV and blue light blocking chromophores. They don't do anything to protect the skin of the eyelids and contact lenses are not a great solution for water sports due to the risk of infection. Contact lenses and refractive surgery do offer superior optics to eyeglasses not just because of light transmission and reflection but also no distortion or change in image size because the refractive correction is closer to the nodal point of the eye.

No doubt, Trivex lenses are nicer than poly. Lenses with premium AR are nicer than those without AR. iPhone3 works find and so does Samsung Galaxy J3. No doubt the flagship models are nicer. But its up to the user to decide value and what makes sense. I tend to advocate for more disposable glasses when they are used in environments where they are likely to be damaged or lost.

[Wind Over Water]

Does anyone have experience buying kitesurfing sunglasses from an optometrist? I like a lot of the sunglasses you guys have shared, but none of them have a dealer in my area (San Francisco). I need to add prescription on my lenses, and I prefer to try them on to make sure they fit well.

I also imagine some of the niche brands like Lip aren't carried by most optometrist. What about a more well known brand like Oakley? Do they make any sunglasses suitable for kiteboarding? I figured it's easier to find a brand like Oakley from my optometrist.

[jakemoore]

Any sunglasses are fine so long as you wear them. Oakley and RayBan etc will work fine but may have less wrap. The optician likely has a selection of several labs, each with a selection of lens treatments and materials. I like CostaRx a lot. I also have had good luck with Hoya’s premium product.

[PullStrings]

School's out....for now

Goodness Gracious Me! I knew this day would come. But I never thought it would be from "pulley". He has presented apparent facts, reasoning, and logic, in a pretty calm and collected manner without resorting to any personal attacks or blatant displays of frustration. I must "tip my hat" to pulley!

As i type this... i am looking through expensive clear anti reflective computer glasses that block 35% of harmful blue-violet light
Retina very happy

Here are some visuals for you about anti reflective benefit to the vision :







Majority of people that dislike sunglasses kiting is because they appear too dark or it feels like looking through a veil
If it has on the back of lenses the AR treatment then they would become a lot more enjoyable
It is worth the money to buy sunglasses with back AR

School's out again...for now

[TomW]

My biggest problem with sunglasses is that the polarisation takes away ability to read the water surface. On Hydrofoil this is even worse, I think because of head height above the water.
So read about this" vertical polarisation ". That allows better sight of water surface. Bought some Forward Wip sailing sunglasses with vertical polarisation. ( haven't got them yet).
But then did some research and apparently all polarisation is vertical!
Is this BS marketing?

[Bille]

My biggest problem with sunglasses is that the polarisation takes away ability to read the water surface.
...

Is there a such thing as : " just a little bit of polarization ; like 1/2 of normal" ?

Yes -- i'm ignorant , of how this works.

Bille