oval mask question

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Scotttyd

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I see pics of the old style oval mask, I was wondering what is it about them that caused them to fall out of favor in the mainstream world. I have never used one, but I would think you would have a better view of things around you with just one big open frame to look through? I am guessing your peripheral vision is not as good as modern masks?
 
I always liked oval masks for Scuba but they are a liability for freediving. Upon reaching the age where bifocal lenses are required, the cost of having separate masks became prohibitive. The lower volume mask won.

I suspect that most people could not easily equalize their ears by pressing the mask against their nostrils so the ability to pinch the nose is the driving factor. Oval masks are still available, fit the most faces, and are generally the least expensive. Here is a version with nose pinching recesses.

IST Classic Round Dive Mask m27 with reviews at scuba.com
 
I enjoy using an oval mask but there are several negatives and positives. Negatives that they carry a moderate volume, downward vision is restricted and side vision is only mediocre. As well, these days they are made only as cheap pool toys and low end junk for the Asian market. Additionally, most all of the authentic, original masks were made from neoprene rubber and are either rotten are well on their way to being rotten.

Positives, they look cool, especially sitting jauntily atop your forehead where all masks belong when not underwater, they are great for photography models because you can see facial expression which also helps with communication, they are easy to clear and easy to swish water in to clear fog and they are comfortable.

JFYI, the best mask ever made is the Atomic Frameless, everything else is a wannabe IMO.

N
 
Why have the oval masks fallen out of favor? Well, Akimbo mentioned one, the air space required for free divers to equalize the air when free diving. We went away from them when the low-volume masks became available. I had one like the Cressi Pinocchio, which had a rubber insert which further lowered the volume of the mask. My LDS has one of those on display now.

But beyond that, there is the issue of "field of vision" for these masks. Dr. Glen Egstrom of the University of California published a paper titled "Effect of Equipment on Diver Performance" in a publication titled HUMAN PERFORMANCE AND SCUBA DIVING, Proceedings of the Symposium on Underwater Physiology*, held April 10-11, 1970 at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. In it he looked at a lot of equipment, including both fins and masks. He studied five types: the oval, the kidney, the recessed kindney, the Scubapro full-face Visionaire (as a control, as it did not restrict vision at all), and the USD Wraparound. He had charts which showed the field of vision for each. The oval mask did not fair well in these tests. Here is what Dr. Egstrom had to say:
The face plate still provides tunnel vision, magnification, refraction, and in some cases, distortion. The sports diver adapts to these limitations and generally finds little fault with faceplates. However, the increasing demands on working divers should result in a closer look at the problem. An effort to measure the visual fields of representative existing mask configurations was conducted at UCLA. The results are summarized as follows:

The normal field for two eyes extends about 60-70 (degrees) upward, 100 to each side and 80 downward. The binocular field of vision has roughly the same upper and lower limits but extends about 60 to the side. A comparison of the figures shows that while upper vision is relatively free of restriction, the side restriction is considerable and the lower field is severely handicapped.

The full face plate, while a significant improvement, offered the disadvantage of an interdependent air supply and visual capability. The wrap-around on the other hand, offers a wider visual field but the curvature of the glass offers distortion, and in the case of the paneled type wrap-around, the panel dividers reduce the visual field by offering "blind" areas. It appears that there is still room for an inexpensive mask configuration to afford greater fields of vision to divers.
In the military, in 1969 the oval mask was still in use a lot:
SamobaggingfishinOkanawa.jpg

Those newer masks were developed, and gained in popularity. I started using a Scubapro wraparound for my scuba diving about that time, and am still using that type of mask.
DacorR-4inuse.jpg


One thing, Akimbo gave a link to an oval mask currently available. I tend not to buy transparent silicone masks, as they will produce reflections inside the faceplate from overhead. This can be very distracting in water with poorer visibility, as the reflections are actually brighter than the images coming through the faceplate when on the surface. Photographers love the transparent masks because they provide good lighting on the diver's face for their photographs, but they are not necessarily the best way to go for the diver wearing them. Here is another source of oval masks, which are black rubber and more like the experience we got in the 1950s through the 1970s.

Buy $69.99 Voit UDT Fins Duck Feet Vintage Scuba Diving Masks

SeaRat

*Yttri, Cy, Director of Publications, "Effect of Equipment on Diver Performance" by Glen H. Egstrom, Ph.D., Department of Physical Education, University of California, Los Angeles, in HUMAN PERFORMANCE AND SCUBA DIVING, Proceedings of the Symposium on Underwater Physiology, The Athletic Institute 1970, SBN 87670-805-X, Chicago, 1970, pages 8-9.
 

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I have an Oceanways Pacific oval mask that I bought last year sometime at my local LDS for 39.95.
It has a rubber skirt with nose finger pockets.
It sucks for downward vision, side vision is not great, upward vision is super, and forward vision is unobscured and spectacular with no annoying frame or nose obstruction like the low vol masks can have.
The only other problem is that the rubber is much harder than silicone and the mask can push in hard on my upper lip/teeth under my nose and make that area sore.
I bought it to complete my vintage diving costume. I want to emerge from the water sometime and have a kid on the beach yell "Hey mom. look, it's a skin diver like Sea Hunt!".
 
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I use the oval (actually an elipse I suppose) in my avatar a lot and like it as a functional vintage piece. It has finger pockets for the nose and the field of vision is not that bad. I find it hard to get a good seal on most masks though and it is no exception. About 50% of the time I have to clear it throughout the dive but when it seals properly it is comparable to my modern masks and I have no issues using it for fun recreational dives.
Modern masks do have the advantage in their lower volume design and wider face gasket design though IMO.
 
I love my oval masks and I won't wear anything else on my face when I go snorkelling in the North Sea. I still have a blue-skirted British-made Typhoon mask from the early 1960s, a birthday present from my parents, which is a joy to wear. Its double-seal rubber skirt is still perfectly soft and malleable and still fits my face without leakage, but it's too precious to use in choppy waters.

There are plenty of new ovalish masks on the market and many of them are available with traditional rubber as well as silicone skirts. ZKY has mentioned the Oceanways Pacific, which is manufactured in the good old USA for western faces, not in the Far East for Asian populations. Such traditional masks are still made in a number of countries, notably France, where Sommap and Beuchat still manufacture them. And if you want a traditional mask with a skirt, not just a frame, in a hue other than black or clear, then try the blue-skirted ones still made in Greece, Russia, Mexico and elsewhere, e.g.:
image543.gif
wp081b8361.png


I snorkel regularly in the North Sea with my Escualo Ixtapa, purchased new a year or two ago and illustrated above, and it has never let me down.

I agree that traditional oval masks probably have many disadvantages as well as advantages, but that's the case with many things. Looking back over the decades, my take on things is that technological progress isn't a continuous linear development forward, it's all about trade-offs, some of which only benefit the manufacturer. Low-volume masks may be a big help to scuba and free divers, but I'm neither of those, I'm just a snorkeller, and I like the look and feel of a traditional oval mask. Modern masks in LDS look like rows of clones to me - different makes of vintage masks are more recognisable - and they resemble too much either Elton John's stage spectacles or the microscope magnification of a pair of fly's eyes for my liking. Mask design is an art as well as a science, something perhaps forgotten by some makers of modern diving gear.
 
…the best mask ever made is the Atomic Frameless, everything else is a wannabe IMO…

I can’t get a seal on the Atomic Frameless due to a gorilla-like protruding brow — good mask, bad face. Oval masks were probably popular in the military so long because they fit almost anybody, and peripheral vision was not especially important to accomplishing their task.
 
I love my oval masks and I won't wear anything else on my face when I go snorkelling in the North Sea. I still have a blue-skirted British-made Typhoon mask from the early 1960s, a birthday present from my parents, which is a joy to wear. Its double-seal rubber skirt is still perfectly soft and malleable and still fits my face without leakage, but it's too precious to use in choppy waters.

There are plenty of new ovalish masks on the market and many of them are available with traditional rubber as well as silicone skirts. ZKY has mentioned the Oceanways Pacific, which is manufactured in the good old USA for western faces, not in the Far East for Asian populations. Such traditional masks are still made in a number of countries, notably France, where Sommap and Beuchat still manufacture them. And if you want a traditional mask with a skirt, not just a frame, in a hue other than black or clear, then try the blue-skirted ones still made in Greece, Russia, Mexico and elsewhere, e.g.:
image543.gif
wp081b8361.png


I snorkel regularly in the North Sea with my Escualo Ixtapa, purchased new a year or two ago and illustrated above, and it has never let me down.

I agree that traditional oval masks probably have many disadvantages as well as advantages, but that's the case with many things. Looking back over the decades, my take on things is that technological progress isn't a continuous linear development forward, it's all about trade-offs, some of which only benefit the manufacturer. Low-volume masks may be a big help to scuba and free divers, but I'm neither of those, I'm just a snorkeller, and I like the look and feel of a traditional oval mask. Modern masks in LDS look like rows of clones to me - different makes of vintage masks are more recognisable - and they resemble too much either Elton John's stage spectacles or the microscope magnification of a pair of fly's eyes for my liking. Mask design is an art as well as a science, something perhaps forgotten by some makers of modern diving gear.

Just to let people know who are thinking about getting an Oceanways Pacific oval mask:
I had to make one modification to it to make it work well. They had a second skirt inside the mask around the part that seals against your face. This second skirt kept the outer skirt from stretching enough to fit nicely on my face. So what I did was took a very sharp exacto knife and surgically removed the inner skirt and converted the mask into a single skirted mask. It fits my face much better now and seals better.

I looked and saw that the mask is made in China :idk: Oh well.
For $40 bucks the likelyhood that it was American made was pretty slim.
 
The Oceanways in black is "rubber" so I think I will pass on that, I have a skin reaction to anything other than silicone, it is made in China also so that does not speak well for design quality.

Most of the modern "oval" masks are not really scuba quality, to me they look like pool toys but we have had this discussion before and my opinion remains, styles is good, function comes first.

One day I will find a USD Equarama in silicone, there are a few about, it is a scuba grade mask intended for actual diving.

N
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/

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