Ever seen an old lady walking around wearing a pair of yellow glasses that looked like a seventies SuperCoolDiscoVisor[sup]TM[/sup]?
If you haven’t yet, I bet you you will, soon. It seems yellow glasses are a kind of innovation about to become a trend.
My mom, who has reduced vision in one eye due to a bloodclot a few years ago, says her pair helped her more then anything her doctor prescribed. And she bought her pair in some dingy corner of the Internet.
[QUOTE]
Knowing the wave lengths particularly harmful for eyes, the researchers designed special glasses that are analogous to the natural colour-filtering structures of the eye. Such glasses have an amber colour, from light to dark yellow, depending on the intensity of sunlight and the degree of eye damage.
It is curious that such glasses not only protect eyes, but also strengthen the vision. This phenomenon is familiar to professional photographers that often use yellow colour-filters in order to obtain a more precise image."
Does anyone hav personal experiences with eyesight improving by wearing yellow glasses? Do they have to be special, or will any kind do as long as they’re yellow?
It’s no surprise that blue light filters improve sharpness. Differing wavelengths of light have different indexes of refraction, so narrowing the band of transmitted light will sharpen any image. And the cones of the eyes have greatest signal-to-noise ratio for wavelengths around 550nm, which is a slightly greenish yellow.
On the other hand, you are by definition decreasing the transmitted light, so there is a reduction of clarity at low levels of luminosity. Outdoors in the daytime there is plenty of light, so the reduction is immaterial. Indoors, however, the ambient levels are much lower, and it arguable whether the reduction of luminosity decreases visibilty more than the sharpening effects of the filters improve it.
Actually, the yellow is used on overcast days when darker sunglasses would be too dark. I don’t know how they work, but they do make things sharper and easier to see in overcast or hazy conditions. Shooter, hunters, swimmers, cyclists all use them.
I love my blue blockers. I wish I could find another pair. They seem to be out of style nowadays. Used to be able to buy them near the bubble gum and candy at the checkout at stores like WalMart. Wish I had stocked up, but next time they come back in style I’m buying a dozen pairs.
Bluethree, home-shopping networks occasinally sell them under the name Eagle Eye.
It was just funny seeing quite a few elderly people with them, in the daytime, here in the Netherlands. People who aren’t the type for fancy sunglasses at all. That made me think the glasses must really help them.
There was a guy who claimed blue sunglasses helped children with dyslexia as certain colors apparently interfered with the reading pattern. But his theory was never confirmed by other scientists. That didn’t stop some company trying to make a bucketload of money selling ‘special sunglasses for medical use’ for lots of bucks though, where the original ‘doctor’ sold the same for just a few.
In seventh grade, I was diagnosed in a teaching hospital with a form of dyslexia. They tried all sorts of therapies but it was determined that yellow or grey lenses effectively stopped the effect.
That was in 1973.
The treatment has been around for a while. Just took some time for it to become more accepted as valid.
Thanks, Maastricht. You never know what useful information some nice doper is going to make available on these boards. That’s why I come here.
The blue blockers I wear when it’s sunny are too dark to wear while driving at night, in my opinion. I’d love to get some for night driving. Yet, every time I’ve asked an optician about some kind of glasses that improve night vision for driving, he has always said there’s nothing out there like that. Makes me wonder. I’m confident that slightly tinted amber lenses would be helpful at night.
Shoei makes helmets for US fighter pilots and motorcyclists. For the military they developed an orangish colored lense. I have one for the motorcycle, I got it through a shipping error so I tried it out.
Holy shit does it do wonders on an overcast day. I made the first turn at the end of my street and there is a traffic signal over a mile away. I could see the little green dot and was amazed. I kept flipping the visor up and down and am stilled stunned at the difference.
I made a convert of two of my friends to get them as well.
So, a question to those who have good experiences with yellow glasses; will any cheap brand do? Is it just the yellow color that does the trick? Or is it a special kind of yellow?
I bicycle to work in the dark, and I wear yellow wraparound shades. The yellow shades are an improvement over no glasses at all, though that may simply be caused by the fact that they keep the wind (and gnats!) out of my eyes.
They exist. Any truck stop I’ve ever seen the inside of (and that’s been more than a few, I can assure you) carries night-driving, yellowish tinted glasses.
As to their effectiveness, I couldn’t say. I never witnessed another driver wearing a pair, but I generally drove during the day. Take that as you will.
I have used blue blockers a lot in the past, the only draw back I could find was that they will throw off color identification of certain shades of white and yellow objects (example - yellow car could seem white and vice versa)
Thanks everyone. Yet, I find the results of this thread hard to summarize.
I understand that light of a specific colour is just a part, a section of the full spectrum of light. If I understand Punoqllads correctly, any colour of glasses will sharpen vision, as long as they filter out all but a few wavelengths of light. That is consistent with the fact that sunglasses in all colours are sold.
Amber sunglasses seem to be the best, but they’re too dark for hunters, night-drivers, military or elderly people with failing eyesight, who want to catch as much of the available light as possible. So for them, yellow glasses instead of darker amber. Am I right so far?
Anyway, none of this explains Grizzrich’s experience of yellow glasses helping with dyslexia. Grizzrich, did your yellow glasses help with your kind of dyslexia? And if so, was it just because of the placebo effect, the yellow color, or something more?
Ski-goggles are tinted yellow. I recall hearing somewhere that this is because the snow would normally reduce depth-perception to effectively zero, but the yellow for some reason is supposed to add contrast and improve vision.
I’ve found that the vivid yellow/amber lenses help in shooting and driving, but only when there is enough light. A good compromise is any sort of polarized lenses, of any color. The main value for glasses in shooting and driving is to keep dirt, dust, cigarette butts and spent casings or gunpowder embers out of your eyes.
