Comparing field of view - 4 different masks

[stuartv]

I got a couple of new masks recently and thought they had much better field of view for peripheral vision than the masks I had been using. Today, I did a psuedo-scientific comparison and figured I'd share the results.

I compared:

DGX Ultra View
Atomic Frameless (Medium)
Mako Spearguns Minimus
Seavision 2100

And, that happens to be the order, from widest FOV to narrowest.

The way I "tested" was I went into my garage - which is a single car garage. I put each mask on and stood in the middle of the garage door and moved forwards or backwards until I could just see both sides of the garage door without moving my head. A wider FOV would mean I could stand closer to the door and still see both sides.

I put tape on the floor at each position as I tried the masks.

Here is a picture with a tape measure showing how far the lines are from the garage door. The DGX mask is closest to the door, because it has the widest FOV. The Seasvision is the furthest, because it has the narrowest FOV (as I suspected!). The Atomic Frameless was not quite as wide (FOV) as the DGX mask and the Mako Mini was just a little narrower than that.

The Atomic was the mask I bought for OW class when I first started diving. I used it for about 4 or 5 months, then switched to the Seavision. I used Seavision exclusively for the last 3 1/2 year almost. After that, all 3 of the other masks just seemed amazingly wide in peripheral vision in comparison. And the DGX and Mako both seal to my face better than the Seavision. Win, win, win!

The DGX is 26" from the garage door. The Seavision is 44".

 

[taimen]

Seavision makes mostly prescription masks. The diameter of the lens blanks used for cutting prescription mask lenses limits the maximal lens window diameter in their masks. That said, they should be able to make lenses to mask models with shorter eye-lens distance that their own models are. Optically it should be better to have shorter eye lens distance. But for some reason they are not very helpful with masks other than their own models.
Now I have two Tusa Freedom CEOS masks they were willing to make. Very comfortable and dry mask, but lack the field of view I have when diving with contact lenses and a small volume single frame mask.