Do coloured lenses make a difference?

I use Volt-X safety glasses, available in clear, smoke, amber and polarising, with a bifocal type reading lens.

If you're not a spectacle snob they're fine. I experience a bit of fogging when I stop but not too bad. They do a passable impersonation of much more expensive cycling glasses for about £15 a pair.

So happy to say goodbye to the 'stop'n'swop-glasses' palaver when looking at map or phone.

Thank you both. Those safety glasses look fine to me, and I'm intrigued about the stick on lens thing, but unfortunately my eyeballs are short-sighted, which apparently means I must have proper prescription lenses. I only started wearing glasses for cycling a couple of years ago, and since then I've just worn normal specs. I remember mixed reports of the "mini-specs" - attached to the inside of sunglasses, Briko and Bolle style - before, but there seem to be plenty of cheapy versions available, hence my query. I guess I could also consider contacts.

You're welcome Balthazar, I realised after posting that not everyone is a long sighted old git like me, and that those safety glasses are only suitable for cerrtain eye problems. I recall a thread some time ago  on Road CC about prescription glasses with some links. It may be worth searching for.

I'm short-sighted and deeply cynical about big brand sunglasses. My optician showed me their best sellers to cyclists, but as the frame alone was £175 I struggled not to laugh. I'm sure they are terrific even without high modulus unobtainium nose pieces but after glazing would have been about £400.

I looked at some of the cheaper type with a secondary lens holder, but even without glazing the holder, I could tell it would be too close to my eyes and quite heavy, but they do allow a wrap around style which is difficult to produce with a prescription.

I found some prescription sunglasses on Amazon for very low prices but the lens power is the same both sides and my eyes are not. There were also none of the other corrections that are important if you're going to wear the glasses for hours at a time.

So I decided to by from an online optician, and only considered those who take all the numbers from your prescription. I spent £80 at spex4less.com and have been very happy. The style is good, the optics are good, and summer rides up to 6 hours are no problem for my eyes. There are plenty of such websites, some a bit less up front with pricing.

Hope this is useful.

Extremely useful, thank you. I'll have a look at that website- that's about as much as I would want to pay (I'm too old and jaded to spend vast amounts of money on bits of plastic from Luxoticca) , and like you I have weird differences between my eyes that should be taken into account. Thanks all!

I have. I buy Sports multi lense pairs on amazon or ebay and then I get a set of lenses out of a old pair of glasses and use hot glue to stick them onto the inside of the lense I am using. If you do it with care it then the result is pretty near perfect and I have never had a set like this fall apart or fog up. If you have no sacrificial spare set around then buy a cheap set of plastic lense reading glasses of the correct power for your eyes and then break the frame to get the lenses out.

leqin wrote:

I have. I buy Sports multi lense pairs on amazon or ebay and then I get a set of lenses out of a old pair of glasses and use hot glue to stick them onto the inside of the lense I am using. If you do it with care it then the result is pretty near perfect and I have never had a set like this fall apart or fog up. If you have no sacrificial spare set around then buy a cheap set of plastic lense reading glasses of the correct power for your eyes and then break the frame to get the lenses out.

thats an interesting idea, thanks. I do have an old pair of specs and an even older pair of bikey sunglasses... I might have a go at this. I'll let you know if I manage not to destroy both of them

I have an pair of adidas photochromics with prescription inserts, generally they are no more prone to fogging up.

I've managed to wear them through the day and into the night on long brevets, the only time I wish I had my normal glasses with me as well as when we go inside during the day, as I feel a bit self concius wearing glasses indoors, and they do take time to react to lower light conditions

Kapelmuur wrote:

How can you tell whether lenses are Polarised?

I have a drawer full of sunnies some of which were sold as Polarised but the labels have come off and I don't remember which is which.

If you've got a device with an LCD display like a watch or calculator (I think phones will work too), then look at it through a lens and then turn the lens - if it's polarised the display (which is polarised) will turn black. Similarly, if you've got one known polarised lens, then putting that in front of another lens and turning it will also make it block light at certain angles.

Another way is to find somewhere that there's lots of glare from a wet road or lake or something horizontal and again, turn the unknown lens and at certain angles it will block the glare.

A "fun" trick if you've got three polarised lenses is to demonstrate how light is quantum and not classical - put the three lenses so that they overlap at different angles. Where there's no overlap, lots of light can pass; where there's two lenses overlapping hardly any light will pass, but where all three overlap, there'll be more light transmitted than with just two overlapping.

I will be popping all my polarised lenses out later to give that a try, it sounds interesting.

I think the theory is probably more interesting (in a nerdy way) that the actual experiment as it's a bit underwhelming.

Here's a handy explainer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcqZHYo7ONs

or

https://www.alienryderflex.com/polarizer/

if you shine light through two pairs of polarised lenses and rotate them so they are not aligned no light should get through, as I recall from GCSE physics

Be wary of cheap/fake lenses/frames - I've seen some nasty accident aftermaths where fake oakleys etc shatter and impale the rider...they may look the same, but they are not made or tested to the same tolerances and so on (not to say they are not overpriced)

Cheap/knockoff sunglasses in general are potentially very damaging, as they often won't have genuine UV protection - so the dark tint opens your pupils up to increased ultraviolet damage. Like buying fake sun cream for your holiday, it's a false economy

Nick T wrote:

Cheap/knockoff sunglasses in general are potentially very damaging, as they often won't have genuine UV protection - so the dark tint opens your pupils up to increased ultraviolet damage. Like buying fake sun cream for your holiday, it's a false economy

I think that's a bit strong. If you read cases where they actually measure UV protection you find that it's not as scary as the over priced brand name merchants would like you to fear. Any £5 job from Aldi or Lidl will be just as good against UV. That's not too surprising, since polycarbonate is naturally opaque to UV, it does not need any special sauce from Oakley. It just isn't difficult or costly to make them UV proof.

P.S. https://www.bikebiz.com/theyre-just-bits-of-plastic-why-cyclists-buy-fak...

I wasn't really talking about Aldi (a retailer like that selling sunglasses will have to ensure that their stock does as advertised, I'd have no qualms wearing a 5 quid pair of theirs), more the knockoff Faux-kley lenses etc you can buy for pennies from aliexpress or genuinely cheap rubbish off a guy's blanket stall in front of the Eiffel Tower 

As long as the lenses are made of polyacrbonate, which as someone else on this string has pointed out is opaque to UV, you'll be fine from a protection-from-UV perspective.

I'm still mystified at the Fauxkley thing though. Plenty of decent cheap sunnies out there (my got-to low light option is a B'twin photochromic set) without resorting to knock-offs.

Foakleys from Alibaba? That'll be about 3:20 on the video
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_R6dJVs7t_I

Depends on what eye correction you need, but since I've needed readers I found just reading my Garmin getting increasingly difficult on the bike. I started experimenting with stick on Hydrotac lenses.

The idea is you wet the Hydrotac lense, put into position and squeeze the excess water out with any air bubbles, thus causing the two surfaces to adhere with no distortion to your vision.

These certainly allowed me to see my Garmin display again once I'd worked out where exactly I need to position them on the inside of my Oakley photochromic lenses.

I do sweat a lot and found that sweat from my brow and helmet pad would dribble down over the lenses and in summer especially, would cause the lenses to lose their adhesion. 

After mulling over for some time I bit the bullet and glued them on with Bondic, very carefully to prevent getting the resin all over the Oakley lenses! Done carefully, with any excess wiped off with cotton buds and isopropyl alcohol before using the UV light to harden the resin has made a permanent and distortion free bifocal set of Oakleys which will not be disturbed with sweat or water! Much cheaper than prescription Oakleys, but probably only any good if you only need reading lenses...

If you have not come across it before I can highly recommend Bondic which is  a clear liquid plastic resin which stays liquid until exposed to UV light (you get a little UV light pen with the pack). It sets rock hard, can be sanded if you need it to be and is so much better than superglue etc as you won't get everything stuck (including fingers) whilst you try to position something! It has so many uses not only on bikes but around the home. I have stuck my Di2 Junct A box mount to the underside of my stem so I could dispense with the unsightly rubber band, fixed a crack in our food mixer bowl and so on. It's my 'find of the year' for 2020 so far!

Your comment about the resin has me thinking- I have a 3D printer which prints in UV curing resin, maybe I could try to print my own lenses. Can't see that going wrong

Trouble reading your Garmin whilst riding....that's old age in my case! I was thinking of mounting a magnifying glass over the screen!