The spectacular power of Big Lens | Hacker News Reader

The spectacular power of Big Lens

theguardian.com

77 pointswalterbell43 comments

Being married to an optometrist and privy to some of the numbers of the business, I'm always a bit annoyed reading these articles. Yes, the margins on frames are high. Are the overall profits of the business high? Not particularly. The staffing costs are essentially subsidised by the products they sell. If you put 'reasonable' markups on the frames, then you have to make the costs of the eye tests a lot higher to pay for the time of your expensive staff and then fewer people are willing to get tested and their problems go unnoticed. Sometimes they are serious enough to be life-threatening or to cause total loss of vision. Your GP is not going to notice a bulging optic disc for example.

So while I appreciate the consumer sentiment of 'This looks like I'm being ripped off', I think the current pricing model is actually in the best interest of public health. Even SpecSavers model of 30min appointments is a bit suspect really.

When you go to LensCrafters (owned by Luxottica), the doctor is not always employed by LensCrafters, they can be an independent. The price of eye exams is also influenced by the insurance industry.

Yeah, if you consider the actual cost of visits, the end product has to subsidize the entire business. It took 3 visits for me to get contacts. The contacts were about $200 for a year's supply, and each visit was about $60.00. Each of the people involved has to make a part of that as their pay, and on top of that they have to rent an office, maintain stock, lease equipment, etc.. All to sell me some squishy bits of hydrogel for less than what a cell phone costs. I'm really surprised if they broke even on me.

But why did it take you three visits to get contacts?

It's also interesting that hard (RGP) contacts, which last essentially forever, are now virtually impossible to buy from high-street opticians.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigid_gas_permeable_lens

Contact lenses aren't always easy to fit. Especially if you are correcting for astigmatism. There's sizing, weighting, permeability and the unmeasured but distinct differences between brands. There's also the choice of changing the actual powers involved for different reasons. So people have to take them away, try them for comfort and such... Three visits is pretty normal. If you are a keratoconic then 3 visits would be a very easy case...

RGPs aren't nearly as gas-permeable as hydrogel lenses. They also break and they fall out, and they're not as hygienic because you're reusing them so much. A year's supply of monthly lenses is about $200, which is about what I would spend on glasses.

As another poster said, you have to try different brands and make sure the prescription works and that they're comfortable. For example I couldn't stand having any of the Acuvue lenses in my eyes for more than a couple of hours, but the Biofinity lenses I use now are comfortable all day.

And yet Ace and Tate can sell specs for €99.

Slightly OT, but I can't resist mentioning a blog post of mine: http://scottlburson2.blogspot.com/2016/01/lcd-backlights-and...

Anyone with a correction of more than 3 or 4 diopters in either direction, who uses a wide-gamut monitor, might want to take note of this. This includes anyone with a 2016 or newer MacBook Pro.

Assuming you have Anisometropia (difference in prescription strength between the two eyes), this is only half the deal.

You'll additionally want so called /Iseikonic/ glasses, which equalize the magnification/minification between the two lenses, AND THUS also equalize the angles of prismatic diversion induced outside the center of vision by glasses. This SIGNIFICANTLY reduces eye strain.

The mechanics of lens and frames aren’t yet within the reach of 3D printing, unfortunately.

The current system is absurd and unsustainable.

These guys look interesting (met them at a conference; haven’t tried the product though): they use your phone to scan your face, show you what various frames will look like on your face _as you move it_, make custom frames and lenses on demand, and ship them to you. https://www.topologyeyewear.com

The app seems to work pretty well, but as I said I haven’t tried the real product.

1. That's a terrible pun in the article title that some Americans might miss

2. And here I had hoped this article might go into the details of the HORRENDOUS patent lockdown between Zeiss, Rodenstock, Hoya, Essilor, Shaw Lens, and numerous other vendors, who OF COURSE all refuse to license to each other which essentially forces consumers to use lenses built with a hodgepodge between completely outdated technology and cutting edge technology. Imagine running your modern GPU with an 486 as a CPU - or vice versa.

There are so many cheap online manufacturers. I feel like this is more the last gasp of an overpriced overserviced industry, like if there was a consolidation of travel agents in 2003.

The two that I know of are:

http://zennioptical.com (which I've used for years)

https://www.glassesshop.com/ (which I learned of recently)

If we're sharing websites to obtain glasses, eyebuydirect has been my go to for the last few years.

Warby Parker, while significantly more expensive, does have pretty high quality frames with flat rates on lenses.

If your prescription is less than -5.00, Eyebuydirect provides free aspheric CR-39 lenses, which will be higher optical quality (especially for computer use - less chromatic aberration) than the polycarb lenses used by Warby Parker.

Unfortunately, for people with even moderately complicated prescriptions (e.g., even mild astigmatism), there's no substitute for in-person fitting, as the lens centre must be precisely located.

You just have to measure your interpupillary distance with an accurate ruler. It's very easy with either a mirror or a friend's help.

With a moderate astigmatism you need to center it vertically too, and that's not really possible without trying the frame on and seeing how it sits.

Does that number change over time? Sounds like a one-time calibration, pretty much like my jeans size.

No, it varies with each frame and lens shape. My eyes are offset vertically and I have severe astigmatism and it usually takes more than one visit to get proper fitting.

EyeBuyDirect and FramesDirect (both owned by Essilor) will remake your glasses with correct pupil/fitting height. Order the first pair, adjust them for correct fit, including pantoscopic tilt, then measure the vertical position of pupil. Make any compensation needed for tilt, then return the frame for a free remake with the new value.

When you order the same frame again, you can specify your custom fitting height.

Or walk in to an optometrist and have them competently do all of that for you and then sell you the glasses.

There is broad variability in competence of individual opticians, whether independent or at a chain store. If you have access to a competent local optician in your city, wonderful. If you don't, there's no reason to pay 10X prices for worse service than you can obtain yourself with a few minutes of measurements. Unlike an optician who needs to fit a wide variety of customer faces, you only need to fit a single face, which is a one-time learning exercise.

We meet again, Mr. Bell. I think you might have missed the last bunch of replies I gave you, you might wish to check!

There's one other thing those online vendors can't give you:

Wavefront aberrometer guided glasses. Unfortunately the industry sits at a shitty place here. Nearly all doctors don't buy those. And even if they do, their measurements aren't portable to the vendor systems. So instead, opticians have those. But opticians can't use cycloplegia, which you do need to get a proper wavefront measurement - and even if you can arrange that (say, by hurrying to your optician very quickly after a doctors visit), you'll run into the problem that most opticians don't configure those devices correctly, leaving them at the vendor default of 3 measurement cycles (instead of the 5 it takes to get statistically useful results), don't check for ring defects on the scan, and so on. It's a mess.

Many online eyeglass retailers are owned by Essilor or Luxottica, not to mention other parts (labs, equipment) of the optical supply chain.

But the technical best frames are still made in Austria, Silhouette. Light and frameless titan, unbreakable.

The Italians or Fielmann haven't figured out that yet.

Eschenbach Titanflex is similar, technology-wise.

Nope, that's one you can get in Germany or from this Italian cartel. Silhouette is frameless.

From Germany, IC Berlin and (spinoff) Mykita have well-engineered screwless metal frames.

Modo (NY) has some lightweight frames made in Japan, including a screwless line, for 50% less.

Eyebuydirect (owned by EssilorLuxottica) has a lightweight metal frame with grooved lens mounting, for 95% less.

And the aesthetically best frames are also still made in Austria - http://schau-schau.at/en/

Only if you like Bulgarian style intellectuals. I heard this is modern in Vienna right now.

I was talking about invisible frames and invisible glasses, as light as possible.

Any chance of 3D-printing lenses? Frames seem easy, but being able to automate lens creation may be able to bypass these big monopolies.

Whatever happened to these water-filled lenses? https://gizmodo.com/5116969/eyeglasses-with-fluid-filled-sac... (2008)

It seems to me that approximately everyone on the planet sees mass media with people wearing ordinary glasses and will want to wear those instead of bulky silicone-filled lenses, even if it costs more. We're already willing to pay hundreds of dollars on name-brand frames- it's not because you can't find cheaper ones.

The article was talking about folks who are far too poor to afford a few hundred dollars to drop on glasses.

I mean, people who can afford basic frames pay more for nicer ones.

Quite poor people, if they get the chance, will probably pay for very-cheap real glasses even if there are even-cheaper silicone ones available. For people with no other choices, I can see the silicone ones being useful! But "hey, take these glasses we made for poor people" is not a great sales pitch.

The article also says a cheap pair of glasses is $5.

You can get perfectly fine, durable, non-dorky plastic frames for $10.

It's already being done, using very interesting technology. The printers are attached to multi-ton blocks of granite (IIRC) to counter vibrations.

They're used to print out uncommon spectacle glasses. Several in use in North America.

https://www.luxexcel.com/ophthalmic-technology

Any chance of 3D-printing lenses?

Yes, it's called "grinding", it's how all lenses used to be made. For like, 500 years.

Next up: can we make lenses on the blockchain?

Subtractive manufacturing is not the same as additive manufacturing.

Formlabs has demoed a 3d printed camera lens, but it's a far cry from the optical quality of eyeglasses. https://formlabs.com/blog/creating-camera-lenses-with-stereo...

I suspect a lot of the polymer lenses are cast to a rough shape and then ground/polished a relatively small amount to reach the final dimension.

Who does the grinding? How many people in third world countries have access to trained and equipped lensmakers?

I’m sad about all your hate. I thought posters to HN were more insightful that this.

Buying non-Luxottica frames is pretty easy. Go to any smaller eye glass shop and odds are they will have independently made frames, sometimes even locally made.

As for cheap lens, you get what you pay for. Improvements in lens materials, such as Trivex, have made life quantifiable better, and lens coatings get better and better all the time. Anyone else remember the first generation of transition lens? Compared to today's coating, is a world of difference. But in regards to being accessible, head down to Costco (no membership card needed) and pick up a pair of quality polycarb lens.

I also find it difficult to believe that England only has 4 frame makers, when I am pretty sure there are more than that in the Pacific Northwest alone!

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