yellow or gold lenses?

A snowHead

Hi folks. First wee question to the forum. I need a pair of googles for flat light. I have a pink lense set of bolle goggles which I like but the other day when skiing I noticed as the light flattened, I could hardly distinguish the snow conditions. My friend said I need yellow lenses so Ive had a look online but can't tell if gold and yellow do the same job? Any thoughts? Thanx in advance and happy skiing Very Happy

A snowHead

@SnowBun, Welcome to the forum snowHead

Firstly, pink lenses are supposed to perform well in flat light (pink, yellow and amber lenses are supposed to be good at this).
But for some reason, yours obviously isn't. So you ought to look at the VLT of a particular lens (visual light transmission), and not just at its hue. For flat light conditions, you want to get a lens with about 60% - 80% VLT rate.

It's hard to answer your question withought knowing what particular lenses you're looking at, so an educated guess would be: *probably* not.
Lenses seldom have gold base so I'm going to guess that this is just a mirrored finish of the lens, but its actual base is red or brown - intended for bluebird conditions.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

Thanx snowglider. I'm a bit confused as my goggles have been ok for most conditions and I wasn't aware that they were any less superior to yellow lenses. I suppose there will be some conditions where all lenses will struggle so Ill check this out. Im not entirely sure of the model of my gogles therefore to ascertain the VLT will be difficult. However I'm reluctant to buy another pair after what you've said. I need to investigate a bit more Puzzled

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I've used for a long time some addidas goggles with a, although mirrored, light pink transmission and they do seem to work well over quite a broad light and conditions range BUT I tried some pure yellow glasses on a dull overcast day later in the afternoon so contrast was well down, and they were literally like turning lights on, the difference was greater than anything I'd have imagined.
Amusingly the yellow lenses were in some glasses I'd bought in Camden market just because they looked like Michael Cane specs and took them as a joke, so they weren't anything remotely special or scientific in any shape or form.

Agree with @snowglider, that gold lenses are usually the coating on the surface to improve transmission properties and don't look gold in colour from the wearers point of view. You can more or less buy gold coated lenses with any transmission colour.

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It can be difficult to complement goggles/lenses when you do not know the specs of the lenses you already got. Unfortunately manufacturers never mark lenses with the relevant info such as VLT/coatings/tint. Have a look in the instructions or if you kept the original box it may be printed there. I was recently also looking into this issue and came across this interesting article about the different lens options for Smith goggles. Some of the info may also be useful for other brands.
http://blistergearreview.com/gear-reviews/smith-goggle-lens-guide

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

Polarised lenses. The rest are just as @under a new name said.

After all it is free

Perisomon Lenses from Oakley are supposed to be one of the best for flat light.
I've got a pair ..
But .. When the light gets flat you just have to put up with it.

doesn't Oakley prizm come into this argument somewhere

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You don't want polarised lenses for sports such as biking or skiing as you won't be able to see wet/icy patches.

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Im due to be skiing this coming week if I can get away from work at some point Laughing

and Ill take a pair of yellow sunspecs that I have for night driving and compare them to my pink goggles and see if there is much difference rolling eyes

snow reports

@snowman, uh? No. Polarised lenses work just fine.

Pink however, are horrid.

You know it makes sense.

@kb36, I think the consensus of opinion is that prism lenses have great definition in mid to bright lighting conditions, but have a far lesser if any advantage in flat light and less optimal conditions.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

Clear lens

A snowHead

A snowHead

i have been a long time fan of oakley lenses for goggles and glasses so may be biased.... i have a pair of hi yellow goggles which were good in low/flat light but just invested in the new prizm rose lense and have to say the difference, in my opinion, is a significant improvement and they really do help.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

There are separate elements as I understand it.

Snow does not polarize reflected light so there can be no advantage to wearing polarising lenses to view it, but, polarised lenses offer 100% filtration of UV spectra so are certainly useful in that respect.

Lens coatings are usually used to avoid dispersion of light at the juncture where it enters and exits the lens material and so preserves the image integrity as scatter would start to reduce clarity. They won't fundamentally change the scene just preserve it as best as possible without modification.

Density (transmittance) brings the viewed light level to within the eye's natural response and avoids saturation.

Colour will change the representation of the viewed scene to increase or reduce your perception of aspects within the image based on the subject's original colour.

As the colours you are possibly trying to modify with snow are most likely to be blue/cyan then the way you'd filter these out would be with yellow, opposing blue, and red, opposing cyan. It's probably going to shift the shadow areas of the snow image the most and will likely change your eye's perception of those shadows (effectively image contrast) and hence may give you more information to work with.

You'd then have to consider (male viewers as I understand it) the effects of colour blindness as this is usually in the red sensitive direction, so two different users of a red lens may give you a completely different appraisal of the same filtration.

Another scenario of low contrast but with high light level is a whiteout, in which I don't think you can filter for our eye's. The contrast is effectively missing so although you can see you determine no details from such a narrow luminance range.

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@rogg, I suppose that thread could be misleading because only those people who like the Prizm lenses posted on it wink

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yellow or gold lenses?

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