Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
Rimless frames are a hell to clean, and are considerably more fragile. If you absolutely want to go with these, make sure the pins that hold the lenses are as short as possible.
I am rather strongly near-sighted, which results in pronounced optical defects in glasses. Sadly, figuring out what the best lens for me would be is quite difficult, not only because most opticians are incapable of properly explaining the differences between them.
The two largest issues I had with stock-lens 1.60 index aspherical glasses, which I’d been dispensed twice in a row as a simple compromise between price and thickness, were chromatic aberration, and barrel distortion.
It turned out that the chromatic aberration would only improve if I picked a lens with a higher Abbe value, which in practice means a lower refractive index, and thus thicker lenses. Since I want to stay with rectangular frames, and my lenses are already rather thick at the edges, it seems that 1.60 is my sweet spot.
Distortion is affected by the lens profile—the most basic one is called spherical, and you’re likely to be offered aspherical, like I have. But the list continues with double aspherical (atoric), and even more complex designs (freeform; where manufacturers have the most freedom).[1]
The latter is what you theoretically want, if you only have the money, as they’re more difficult to manufacture. Some of the lenses which fall in that category are:
Zeiss ClearView FSV (2022) should be a good compromise between price and value.
Nikon SeeMax Infinite (2019) seems to be FSV, but with an extra parameter regarding aberration—it’s hard to find concrete information. In the Czech Republic, one chain store has become an exclusive seller of all Nikon lenses, as I’ve been told.
Rodenstock semi-individual lenses, such as Multigressiv Mono 2.
Again, sadly, it is nearly impossible to find any details or reviews, and a lot of what you read is marketing bullshit, where they like to compare freeform designs with spherical ones.
Not knowing any better, when I needed new glasses, I went with Rodenstock, which was the lens supplier of the store I finally found an acceptable frame in.
Rodenstock’s proprietary DNeye scanner measures a lot of things, and gave strange results. In particular—and here it agreed with another strange measurement I received at an eye doctor from an autorefractor—a rather large cylinder value in one of my eyes that was simply wrong. It also claimed an unreasonably large size difference between my pupils in mesopic vision. I wasn’t offered a remeasurement. Instead, we came up with different numbers the old way with a trial frame.
The lens product I received was the single-vision variant of ‘B.I.G. EXACT’. The optician wanted to push me into the blue light filtering meme, as well as higher indexes, which I was knowledgeable enough to reject.
My glasses were finished much faster than estimated, in less than a week, and cost about 15.000 CZK.
While they offer a major improvement in clarity over my old scratched and worn, mildly weaker glasses, I can’t say I’m particularly excited:
Where my old aspherics kept their sharpness towards the top of the lens, these stay sharp towards the bottom. This difference is fucking annoying, making me learn to position my head differently, and I’d like to have a middle option.
My right lens, only about 1 D stronger, has much worse horizontal angles for text.
Geometric distortion appears rather unaffected.
Night vision is also more or less as bad as before, likely due to astigmatism.
The product logo on the back of the right lens is unasked for.
In the future, I’m going to go for either Zeiss or Nikon, as this wasn’t worth the money. I’m somewhat inclined to try Zeiss i.Scription.
Overview of goggles through which I can see at all.
The safe option, will fit over any reasonable glasses, but once combined with a half-mask respirator, the doubled legs get rather annoying.
Anti-dust. While my glasses do fit inside, they prevent the goggles from making a seal around my brows, and this cannot be adjusted. Nearly useless from the get-go.
Anti-dust. I had to have lenses made for the prescription insert. That flimsy piece of plastic poses a minor issue with eyewear stores, but they will manage. Even ordinary 1.5 index lenses fit perfectly with my –6.
What no one will tell you: the optical centre when you put them on might not be in the middle, and you should ideally get anti-fog lenses, or at least some kind of an anti-fog spray.
The lenses also end up being further away from your eyes than with normal glasses, which will screw up your space orientation.
With your fingers using soapy water, then wipe with microfiber cloth.
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