Magnifying lamps

[newshound]

Depends on what you are doing. Illuminated anglepoise type works fine for my wife with sewing, embroidery type jobs.

I am rather fond of "Peer" binocular magnifiers. Mine have no light but a separate small halogen desk light does the job.

I have a (cheap) pair of surgeon's magnifiers (basically a little pair of Gallilean binoculars which clip on to my glasses) but don't find them particularly effective. For high mag without a doubt the best thing is a stereo microscope with through the lens illumination, on a good solid stand.

[PeterC]

I don't know how it would be with the lenses, but with a x5 mirror I can see a lot better with my distance specs on - improves depth of field mainly, so useful well back on each side where the difference in distance is significant.

I'm not impressed by the size of the universe - it's all within my near point!

[damduck-egg]

That is quite important I have found and if you had not mentioned it was going to make a post suggesting the weight of any head mounted device is important, not all advertisers make it available. The weight of 3 AAA batteries may not seem much in a hand but 20 minutes or so suspended an inch or two in front of your forehead can be an additional discomfort. At a bench my experience has been that it is better to illuminate with decent lighting generally and occasionally augment it with a really bright flood lamp rather than use the fairly feeble lights that are fitted on these head magnifiers in that price range. The LEDS fitted may not consume batteries as much as my first one that had filament lamps but IMO are still inadequate to work by. They may occasionaly be useful for a job away from the bench like threading cotton though a needle eye , a comon request from the missus if she gets the old Singer sewing machine out.

100 years old last year, The machine not the missus.

G.Harman

[NY]

This is because in bright light your pupils contract which stops down the lens, increasing the depth of field (as for a camera lens) and so bringing into focus things that were previously too close for your eyes to focus on.

[NY]

My distance vision (eg wording on signs) is fractionally better with distance glasses than without, but it is well below the threshold at which you are required to wear glasses for driving (and have your licence marked with the code for "wears glasses").

That does me fine as close as normal viewing distance for a computer screen. My reading glasses actually make a computer screen less sharp (my eyes strain to focus) but are essential for reading a book at normal reading distance.

It had been coming on a little while when I was in my mid-40s, then I had a heart attack and cardiac arrest, and the temporary starvation of oxygen seems to have made my close vision suddenly worse.

[Harry Bloomfield]

NY wrote on 02/09/2017 :

You can get a similar effect, by almost closing your eyelids - handy if you can almost read some text without glasses.

[NY]

Good way of putting it.

One of my camera lenses has that problem: the furthest end-stop of the focussing ring focuses "beyond infinity" which is frustrating because it means you can't just move the ring as far as it will go when moving from close to infinity, but instead need to focus carefully and not go too far. Autofocus is fine, but sometimes it's necessary to go for manual control to avoid the AF getting confused.

It's probably a fault lens and something has worn a bit.

[Brian-Gaff]

Don't know but RNIB usually keep a lot in stock but not cheap to vat payers. The more the mag the narrower the view of course. Brian

[Capitol]

Or cataracts.

[Graeme]

In message , John Rumm writes

Thanks chaps. An interesting range of views and recommendations. Still not sure which way to go, really. My sight is generally OK, although I wear specs for driving, and usually wear them just walking out and about, but if I go shopping, I have to look over the top to read price labels. I couldn't easily read the screen in front of me now, with specs on.

Most of what I do is repairs to small motors etc., although I really struggled, changing a fan in Wifey's laptop a while ago. Trying to hold magnifier and torch whilst using screwdriver all at once is not easy :-)

TBH, I think it is the light I need most, although magnification often runs a close second.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Quite. A decent light source causes the eyes to stop down increasing the depth of field. Bringing the wanted object into focus more easily.

Also poor quality LEDs - ie all cheap ones - cam make differentiating between colours or shades of a colour more difficult or impossible. Like when looking for a dry solder joint and so on.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Anglepoise with a decent large mains halogen lamp.

I've tried pretty well everything else, and nothing comes close.

I do have a decent twin florry above the bench for general illumination, though, which is fine for most things.

[NY]

For reading in bed, I like an anglepoise fluorescent positioned just above my head so it is shining directly on to the book without being at an angle and causing shadows. Being fairly cool, it can be close to my head without feeling hot.

My wife thinks that this will strain my eyes because the book is much more brightly lit than the rest of the room, and thinks it is better to have an overhead ceiling light in a large shade. Since this light is by the foot of the bed, much less light shines on the book compared with the rest of the room, and the light of the lampshade is many times brighter than on the book.

We've now compromised that I turn the overhead light off, and have a lamp on the bedside table with a multi-colour Philips Hue LED bulb which provides nice bright white light for reading (while the light itself is out of my field of view - very important) but which can be changed to a more orange light to get my brain into a going-to-sleep mood.

[Robert]

I moved over to an e-reader with backlight (Nook). Makes reading in any lighting condition and without best glasses so much easier.

[whisky-dave]

I brought 15 of these for the lab which work quite well

1 year later I found these much cheaper but don't come with a PSU.

Using the crop clips are OK for holding light work a bit of stripboard but they won't hold up anything a bit heavier this applies to both sets. It's still a bit difficult to get things in focus when soldering. We do have larger magnifiers with a floursecant tube, the glass lens is better than the acrylic or plastic but not that much better.

[AnthonyL]

Similarly if I close my fingers to make a small tunnel wth a small aperture some small objects become clearer.

[whisky-dave]

That is because the brain can concentrate on teh centrasl area of vision an d there;s less distraction so yuo eye spends more time looking rather than scanning the rest of the field of view, some think this method creates a ty pe of air magnifying lens, but it's really just the brain having more time and less of a field of view.

[AnthonyL]

Similarly if I close my fingers to make a small tunnel wth a small aperture some small objects become clearer.