Prescription mask

[WOODMAN]

Whichever you choose, I recommend that you make sure that the mask fits you well first, and then have the optical lenses fitted to it. Be sure you talk to the optical house who will do the prescription lenses before you buy the mask, as not all masks have enough clearance inside for the lenses. And if you use bifocals, make sure you have the placement of the bifocal line correctly marked. I have a mask where the line is just a little too high, and I was constantly fighting with it to keep the bifocal out of my general vision plane.:shakehead

 

[Spikester54]

I am considering this mask for my perscription. Couple of questions:
Is the entire lens made for my perscription, or do they add an insert to the lens?
I noticed on the companies web page you can get color correcting lenses as well. Do you use these, and if so, what are the advantages and disadvantages. Thanks for your help.

 

[shakeybrainsurgeon]

The seavision I use is excellent...the whole lens is made to your prescription, no "drop ins"...they are expensive (about 200 dollars for a typical mask) but worth it.

 

[Hyper-limits]

Here

http://www.diveriteexpress.com/fins/masklenses.shtml

$129.00 not bad.

 

[MichiganDiver]

You should consider the Hydrooptix mask (www.hydrooptix.com). It has been discussed elsewhere on this board.

The mask is designed to use the optical properties of water as a natural lens. In fact, you need to be near-sighted to use it; 20-20 divers need to wear contacts to make themselves near-sighted.

It's a bit unconventional, in that it is not a "low-volume" mask (by a long shot), so you have to beware of "mask squeeze" as you descend.

I purchased one of these masks, and I can say that the field of view is excellent. I have not had the opportunity to dive more than once with it, but the one dive was fine. Prior to that I dove with contact lenses and fitted small bifocals inside my non-prescription mask. I found the bifocals to be quite distracting. The line made me feel like I was always swimming to an edge or cliff.

I will also say that a company executive called me twice after I expressed interest on their website. She was quite personable. We chatted for at least 30 minutes about the mask and diving in general. Her personal attention contributed to my decision to purchase the Hydooptix. I believe that I bought it from Leisure Pro -- the best price I could find at the time. Competitive with prescription masks.

 

[fisherdvm]

The corona is a very reasonable priced prescription mask for an adult or child with a small face.

 

[spectrum]

http://www.seavisionusa.com/masks.asp

I use one of these...

they're pretty sweet...

I contacted them to find a local dealer or to get a "loaner mask" to try before spending money on my script. My face is not an easy one to fit so trying in advance is just common sense. I was surprised that they had no way to work with me. All they could say is that they fit most faces.

I do like the product line especially the clip-on option. My home and travel waters can be very different.

Pete

 

[ba_hiker]

I have had a couple of masks fitted to my perscription and was well satisfied by this guy, a skin diver in Ukiah. Scuba vision is his business.

http://www.zapcom.net/~scubavsn/zap_page/

 

[Marek K]

Can anyone recommend a reasonably-priced prescription mask? Not the little dinky ones about an inch across which you place on the inside of the glass but the full glass prescription type. I know that I am missing out on stuff since I wear bi-focals.

Hi!

I assume: a) you're nearsighted; b) you're not diving with any kind of correction now; and c) you're wondering whether you need not only distant-vision correction, but near vision (bifocal "reading") correction also.

I'm about -9.5 diopters nearsighted in each eye, with about +2 progressive reading correction now in each eye... in my eyeglasses. I can't read comfortably in air at even arm's length without the reading correction. Plus I've got quite a lot of astigmatism.

But I dive with spherical (no reading or astigmatism correction) -9.0 corrective lenses in my dive mask. I have perfect distant vision in the water, and no problems at all seeing things close-up... like gauges. Optics in water are quite different than in air.

The point is that spherical-correction mask lenses are much cheaper than those with astigmatism and/or reading correction. If you don't need the additional correction in the water, you can save a lot of money.

Problem is, you can't know for sure until you try lenses.

Your mask may have off-the-shelf spherical-correction lenses available, which would be the cheapest thing to try -- and you might even be able to talk your dive shop into letting you return or exchange them if they don't work.

If you do have to go with custom-made lenses, either because of your mask or your correction, companies like SeaVision do a fine job.

--Marek

 

[JonKranhouse]

Marek's claim that he has [paraphrasing] "perfect distance vision underwater despite quite a lot of astigmatism, due to underwater optics behaving differently in air” is not accurate if his astigmatism is over 1.0 diopter. To determine your "sphere-equivalent" Rx correction, take 1/2 have the value of your CYL correction and add that to your SPH correction. NOTE that some eye docs write CYL as a "+" value and others as a "-" value -- but the lens geometry is identical.
So you may be adding
a "+" SPH with 1/2 the "-" CYL
OR
a "+" SPH with 1/2 the "+" CYL
OR
a "-" SPH with 1/2 the "+" CYL
OR
a "-" SPH with 1/2 the "-" CYL

In air we do not read an eye chart through clouds of smoke, so we can easily judge the acuity of refraction-correction. But underwater, floating particles always degrade acuity. When Marek assumes his distance vision is "perfect," he likely would also report the visibility of the water to be less than can be seen through exact optical correction. The same lack of astigmatism correction likely aids his presbyopic (near) vision, where increased image size makes up for degraded acuity. There is only one true way to experience the actual “viz.”