I have dandruffs that tend to fall on my lenses. I’m not sure if there is anything special about my last batch of glasses but i have had a lot of trouble cleaning them and they tend to leave smudges even if I use a cleaning solution and microfiber cloth.
The only satisfactory result I’ve obtained was to wash them with water and soap and dry them with something that will not shed anything on them (harder to find than it may sound). Needless to say, this is a less than ideal situation with me.
I’ve ordered these lenses from optical4less, a china-based online store. They are photochromic (get darker as the light gets brighter).
Are some lenses harder to get clean than others?
Does the process to make them photochrome have anything to do with it?
Are there specific brands/models of cleaning solution / fibers that are better than the rest?
This is really very annoying to me. I think I spend half the time looking through dirty glasses. Can’t they just make glasses so smooth that it’s a breeze to clean them? otherwise, What’s the point of all this nanotechnology eh? :smack:
I posted about this soon after I first glasses too. The concensus was no, you basically have to put up with dirty glasses for the rest of your life. You get used to it.
I wash mine with soap and water, using my fingers to pinch the lens between then to scrub off anything, then rinse it off and shake as much water off as possible - never touching the now-clean lenses with anything at all. It seems to last as long or longer than anything else.
My glasses somtimes get so smudged from oils or whatever that my usual microfiber (with or without cleaning solution) method just moves the streaks around. That’s when I resort to the soap & water method similar to what’s descirbed by Askance and dry them off with microfiber cloth or optical-quality towels.
Are they polycarbonates? (They must be, if they auto-darken.) Every pair of polycarbonates I’ve had has gotten smudged to hell, impossible to clean, and eventually the anti-scratch coating flakes off.
My last two pairs of glasses have been made of glass, and I couldn’t be happier with them – my shirt cleans them perfectly without scratching, and if there’s something the shirt can’t handle, one of the pre-moistened lens cleaning wipes that dispensed free at my workplace takes care of it.
I lick them (shut up) and use my shirt usually. Works great.
My current pair seem to never come perfectly clean though - not sure why. But I’m due for a new pair around May so I will be okay. The lenses look like they have tiny dot scratches or something. I’ve tried the whole soap and water, lens cleaning crap, even soaking them (wore my sunglasses so I could see while they were soaking) but nothing gets rid of the little dots. But I haven’t a clue how I would get little dot scratches on the lenses.
I wish I could wear glass lenses. I value my neck muscles too much. I wore glass lenses once, in a doctor’s office. Heaviest things I’ve ever had on my face.
Huh. Oddly enough, mine aren’t glass. They’re some sort of plastic… and my degree of correction is very low, so I can definitely tell when my glasses are dirty.
I steam mine and wipe with a t-shirt (or a microfiber, or one of those clean-room polished-surface-wipes, depending on what I have handy). They stay pretty clean for days after.
IME glass lenses with loads of super-expensive coatings are easier to clean than the ‘plastic’ lenses. It’s one of the few benefits of having a prescription that forces me to use Zeiss 1.9 High-Index glass lenses. They’re heavy enough to buise my nose and cause terrifying wallet cramps, but at least they buff up easily with a microfibre cloth.
You may want to look into different cleaners and cloths though, that combination should be able to shift anything. Or try using cleaner with paper tissue to shift the skin oils and then a microfibre cloth to shift the lint. My uncle does this because his GIANT BUSHY EYEBROWS deposit about a pound of lard a day on his specs. I keep telling him to get his barber to give them a trim, but he’s not having it. And they really are that big and bushy - it looks like he’s wearing a false beard upside down.
If it’s just a quick little cleaning I usually use my shirt. When I want a more through cleaning I use Zeiss Lens cloths. Zeiss is optics/scope company and their wipes work well on camera lenses, rifle scopes, and my glasses. I usually buy a box of them at Walmart. This is what they look like.
I wash my glasses in the shower, I just use regular soap on them, suds them up pretty good, and rinse under the shower. Since most of the dirt and oil on my glasses comes from my skin anyway, the soap works pretty well. Tshirts or cotton hankies or bandanas remove any spots between showers. I usually have a bandana or men’s cotton handkerchief in my purse.
DO NOT use alcohol-based cleansers on plastic frames, and possibly on plastic lenses too. I used to swab down my glasses with my alcohol-based skin cleanser, and the frames became frosted looking in a fairly short time.
I have polycarbonate lenses. Here’s how I do it. I get the tips of my thumb and forefinger wet, and I rub both on the top of a bottle of Palmolive dish detergent. There’s always a trace of detergent there, and that’s all I need. I get the lenses wet, then I rub my soapy fingers on the lenses. Then I rinse under running water, hot if possible. I dry with a dishtowel or clean handkerchief. No streaks, and no lint.
I do that daily, and I wash the temples every few days, too.
I wore glass lenses once, in a doctor’s office. Heaviest things I’ve ever had on my face.