Semi-OT: *neutral* grey sunglasses?

[mhespenheide]

I suspect the strong majority of us ride in sunglasses. I wear sunglasses almost all the time, year-round. In the last year or two, I've gotten more sensitive to color casts in sunglasses. Aside from the obvious tinted lenses, even many of the "grey" lenses have a slight blue or green tint. It doesn't seem to be consistent among manufacturer; I have two pairs of Suncloud (for one example) where one pair is pretty neutral and another has a slight green tint.

Have you noticed the same thing, or does it not bother you? What brands or specifications have you found that are truly neutral?

(Bonus points for reasonable cost, say ~$50; extra bonus for polarized lenses, and super-extra bonus points for inexpensive polarized neutral lenses)

[bigbill]

I've got the previous version of these. They've been good and show true colors. They're not polarized, I have a pair of polarized Oakleys and found they're not as good for cycling. https://www.performancebike.com/shop/scattante-shift-pcl-photochromatic-eyewear-40-4449

[Ozz]

I will have to check when I get home, but I believe my Rudy Project are pretty neutral gray with the Laser Blue lenses.

I prefer lenses that enhance contrast (unless really sunny/bright) so I mostly use the Racing Red lenses...rose tint, but still cuts glare.

[Ken Robb]

If you are old enough to have cataracts they could be acting as yellow/brown filters.

[Mark McM]

I've often heard it claimed that different color lenses can "enhance" vision - either increasing contrast, or sharpness, or ability to detect moving objects, etc. But every time I've tried colored lenses, I've found that it seems that the color is filtering out things that I'd normally see, rather than enhancing anything. Is it just me?

Anyway, I have tried a few neutral grey lenses, and as you'd expect they simply reduce the amount of light (of all colors) that reach my eye. But it seems that most neutral grey lenses are designed to have very low transmission (passing only 2% - 10%), whereas colored lenses often have higher transmission (30% - 50%). While the sun can be bright at midday here in New England, it's typically not as bright as in more southern areas, and I find that most neutral grey lenses are too dark. Why can't they make higher transmission neutral grey lenses?

[parris]

I'm a sunglass nerd and have found many "neutral" gray lenses have a blue cast to them in varying degrees. For what my eyes are sensitive to the cast is something that doesn't work at all. I find it quite fatiguing after a fairly short time.

Oakley and a few other manufacturers make what they call a warm gray which seems to work well but it's a pretty dark tint.

The gray/green was developed and patented by Bausch and Lomb in the mid 1930's. It allows 15% light transmission. The slight green tends to knock down blue light a bit. due to the small amount of green in the dye it's still considered neutral.

I've got a bunch of different sunglass and shooting glass tints that work for various things. Moderate brown's I really like because for me that color family isn't fatiguing and it also doesn't shift the color too much. I also am a fan of mild rose tints for the same reason. When a company goes too strong with a tint everything seems to get washed out for me.

[mhespenheide]

I'm 45; I don't think cataracts are an issue yet.

My other major hobby is landscape photography, where I've gotten picky about color tints.

I can check out Oakley's neutral grey lenses, but after losing two pairs of them in two years, I've mostly stayed away from that expense since then.

[parris]

MH check out AO Optics, and Randolph Engineering for their neutral gray. Both companies supply/have supplied the military with neutral gray glasses.

I have a pair of the AO pilot glasses that a friend of mine that was a crew member on B-52's wore when he was in. Those particular glasses were about the closest to neutral gray as any that I've owned.

I could be wrong but I think the VLT from both companies with the gray lens is either 15 or 18%.

[Black Dog]

I suspect the strong majority of us ride in sunglasses. I wear sunglasses almost all the time, year-round. In the last year or two, I've gotten more sensitive to color casts in sunglasses. Aside from the obvious tinted lenses, even many of the "grey" lenses have a slight blue or green tint. It doesn't seem to be consistent among manufacturer; I have two pairs of Suncloud (for one example) where one pair is pretty neutral and another has a slight green tint.

Have you noticed the same thing, or does it not bother you? What brands or specifications have you found that are truly neutral?

(Bonus points for reasonable cost, say ~$50; extra bonus for polarized lenses, and super-extra bonus points for inexpensive polarized neutral lenses)

If you have existing sunglasses you can probably get aftermarket replacement lens that will be exactly what you are looking for from The Sunglass Fix (https://www.thesunglassfix.com). It is an Australian company that makes the lenses themselves and the prices a are good.

[11.4]

Gray transmission is entirely a product of the bandpass filter designed into the lenses. And what filters to an apparent neutral hue in one light will filter to a colored tint in another.

The reason higher transmission lenses tend to be colored is that to remove enough total light you can’t typically do it in one wavelength alone. You have to hit several. Hence, neutral. And if you want high transmission neutral gray, you run into the problem in paragraph 1.

You can request a high transmission neutral gray and it’ll typically be tuned for 4800 K white light. But look right up at the sky and it’ll look different, and take it under some trees and it’ll look different again. You probably won’t be happy with it.

[OtayBW]

The Oakley 'Prizm Black' lens is about the best lens that I have run across for neutral gray. They make several Prizm lens types - the Black is fairly limited and I don't know it they have them or something similar in a cycling eyewhere. They are my main sunglass that I carry around for general use. I think they are great.

[Ken Robb]

Gray transmission is entirely a product of the bandpass filter designed into the lenses. And what filters to an apparent neutral hue in one light will filter to a colored tint in another.

The reason higher transmission lenses tend to be colored is that to remove enough total light you can’t typically do it in one wavelength alone. You have to hit several. Hence, neutral. And if you want high transmission neutral gray, you run into the problem in paragraph 1.

You can request a high transmission neutral gray and it’ll typically be tuned for 4800 K white light. But look right up at the sky and it’ll look different, and take it under some trees and it’ll look different again. You probably won’t be happy with it.

May we extrapolate and believe that we might be happier with a lens that is obviously green or brown because the color rendition would be skewed but more consistently so than with a "neutral gray" lens?

[11.4]

May we extrapolate and believe that we might be happier with a lens that is obviously green or brown because the color rendition would be skewed but more consistently so than with a "neutral gray" lens?

Smart extrapolation. Yellow lenses are very contrasty in most road cycling mad while I’ve tried a few Persimmon lenses from Oakley, I’ve never liked them in any kind of strong light. They were ok in the winter in Seattle, not so much in a Dallas summer. It isn’t just color — it’s also about how glaring the light is.

Green just doesn’t take out the wavelengths you want but brown does quite well. Not as glaring or contrasty as yellow but you have a more natural and more restful color there. It looks dark but in dim light it actually allows more light through. It’s most effective in very bright conditions but keeps its own when light is lower.

Don’t bother with polarized lenses — they hide road hazards like ice or soft asphalt and they can mess with screens on your bike computer. And I don’t encourage transitional lenses. With your head down they tend to lighten and then hit you with glare when you look up.

If you want to see a specific example that works well, check out the brown lenses that Rudy Project offers. Their top line sports frames are really superb as well. I worry that their coatings may be a bit fragile so I’m careful only to wash them with lens cleaner. A couple Rudy dealers told me to be careful with them when they would say that Oakley coatings were invincible. But I have tested the Rudy brown lenses for soectral transmission patterns under different cycling conditions and like the results.

[mhespenheide]

Gray transmission is entirely a product of the bandpass filter designed into the lenses. And what filters to an apparent neutral hue in one light will filter to a colored tint in another.


I'm not following you. What am I missing? Why can't a lens be designed to cut down amplitude/brightness equally across the visible light spectrum?

[11.4]

I'm not following you. What am I missing? Why can't a lens be designed to cut down amplitude/brightness equally across the visible light spectrum?

The lens will cut out, say, 85% of light at a particular wavelength, say, blue. It will cut out whatever percentages of different wavelengths it is customized to exclude.

If the incoming light is strong in blue, it will eliminate 85% of the blue light but more blue light will still come through than when there is less blue light available (say, in a room lit with tungsten bulbs). So the mix of colors your eye receives will be different. Hence the apparent tint will change. It isn’t always obvious but the difference will often be enough to irritate or fatigue your eyes, and the point of sunglssses is not to remove colors per se (and one color versus another is not what irritates your eyes) but to give your eyes a restful time without an excess of any color or a susceptibility to high contrast.

[mhespenheide]

That, I follow. Is it not possible to design a lens to cut out 85% of all light (in each different wavelength) across the visible light spectrum?

[11.4]

That, I follow. Is it not possible to design a lens to cut out 85% of all light (in each different wavelength) across the visible light spectrum?

That's not hard, but imagine there's twice as much blue as there is yellow around you, and your glasses cut off 85%. There will still be twice as much blue as yellow, so the color will still appear tinted from behind the sunglasses, even though it will be much dimmer.

What you're thinking of is a clipping function, like in radio frequencies where you can simply set a level at which all higher amplitudes are clipped off. Light filtration doesn't quite work the same way -- it's more like a partial bandpass filter in RF.

[mhespenheide]

That's not hard, but imagine there's twice as much blue as there is yellow around you, and your glasses cut off 85%. There will still be twice as much blue as yellow, so the color will still appear tinted from behind the sunglasses, even though it will be much dimmer.


I'm okay with a color tint as long as I'm seeing the same color tint behind the sunglasses as there would be without the sunglasses. I'm not looking to get the same colors in all different conditions. I just don't want the sunglasses to introduce a new / "artificial" color tint that isn't already there.