Does Amber lens really help with color definition ?

[Wei Jin Ngan]

I'm currently looking for some advise or opinions on whether does amber lens really help with the definition of colors doing your dive.

I've currently narrowed down to 2 mask. Mares i3 and Gull Vader Amber.
as both fits me comfortably but i'm really wondering does the amber lens really have a big difference in terms of color definition underwater.

 

[tursiops]

I'm currently looking for some advise or opinions on whether does amber lens really help with the definition of colors doing your dive.

I've currently narrowed down to 2 mask. Mares i3 and Gull Vader Amber.
as both fits me comfortably but i'm really wondering does the amber lens really have a big difference in terms of color definition underwater.

Most folks seem to think it helps at first, but then the brain takes over and does the adjusting. Same thing happens with a clear mask....the brain adjusts. The colored lens cuts down on the amount of light getting to your eyes, too, which is not a good thing. It can be dark underwater....

 

[dmaziuk]

Actually less light makes pupils dilate more, so you get better definition and depth perception. At least where there is enough light for it. Or so I read on the Internet.

I stopped using "amber" shades at work after buying newer displays with "reader mode", but back when I used them it did reduce eye strain from 8+ hours of staring at the monitors. I doubt usual dives are long enough to cause noticeable eye strain, and as @tursiops says the brain adjusts to the colour shift.

 

[aquacat8]

It depends... where are you diving. When I was a California diver I had two SeaVision pink tinted masks. The water there is very green, like looking at everything through a green filter, the pink filters the green as they are opposite on the color wheel, they really made the reds, yellows and oranges pop and made the green water look bluer, like a blue green. Funny thing the first time I dove in Florida I surfaced thinking, wow the reef here really looks like a pink fairyland! Then I realized it was my mask! It was too strong a pink for the higher light levels and better viz of the Florida water. I switched to a clear mask.

 

[aquacat8]

Amber will enrich yellow and oranges... try looking through some amber sunglasses, like the “blue blockers” they sell at drugstores. Do you like the effect? Same idea underwater. Filters can shift color but not show you color that is not lit enough. Nothing makes color show up better than a good dive light. All those photos you see in magazines—the close objects are all lit up by the photographers lights.

 

[dmaziuk]

Now I'm curious about diving to 100-ish feet in an amber mask in the Caribbean: as there's little to no red left at that depth... it'll enrich the green I guess?

 

[aquacat8]

Amber is essentially orange. The opposite of orange on the color wheel is blue. In the Caribbean the water is blue, just as in California it is green (opposite of green is pink/magenta/red). The amber will filter out some of the blue, enabling you to see warm colors like yellow, pink, red, orange, and yellow-green better, colors that are normally washed out by the blue filter of the water. So you feel like you are seeing “more” colors. The amber of the lens is probably not strong so the blue water, although less so, will still look blue, but if the amber were really strong the blue water would start looking muted.

 

[Wei Jin Ngan]

I'll be diving in blue waters most of the time. as from the advice above it seems that the amber lens actually doesn't really help much as our brains will adjust to it with the non colored lens.

 

[Tom Winters]

Just dive clear...skip the gimmick nonsense.