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Best Non-OEM Replacement Oakley Lenses in General

Yes prism. Taper is a very poor description of the relationship of the front and back lens surfaces. $52 for a polar prism is pretty cheap. Not sure of the actual clarity under a Stenograph but I can say for sure a plain non colored quality polycarbonate prism compensated lens blank from Zeiss is more than that price. At cost. Revants non HC3 lenses are NOT prism based.
What's the problem with using taper as a descriptive? It's just the relationship between the front and back curvature of the lens to ensure that you're looking through the same amount of lens material whether you're looking straight forward through the lens or at a more oblique angle of incidence through the extremities. It's why many aftermarket lenses that aren't base in prism or taper-corrected have distortions at the corners.
 
You can't hint at using the effectiveness of combating the induced astigmatism of looking off center. That amount of correction would vary by the vertex distance from back surface of lens to the front of cornea. I could go on but.... getting way to specific :)
 
I was going to post this in the Seek Optics thread, but it was closed while I was writing the reply:

I did a lot of research on aftermarket lenses, and I have several Seek lenses. I'm going to share my thoughts and experiences with Seek, and I'll also be writing down more of my thoughts about Oakley vs. other aftermarket lenses in one of the other threads.

In the past, I wholeheartedly would recommend Seek lenses. I actually prefer them to Oakley lenses, in general (more on that later). Seek however recently changed lens suppliers and now most of their polarized lenses are triacetate and not polycarbonate. I'll elaborate more on this later elsewhere, but I'll just summarize that triacetate lenses do not guarantee the same UV and impact protection as polycarbonate lenses. I have worn triacetate lenses before and experienced snow blindness. I will not wear them again and do not recommend them to anyone. I hope they change suppliers and go back to polycarbonate for polarized lenses.

Let's start with the positives about Seek:

The Seek lenses have an anti-scratch coating. I accidentally smacked into a 2x4 beam which hit right into a Seek lens. I was sure the lens was shattered. I kept checking if I was bleeding because it hurt, a lot, where the sunglasses hit my head. It hurt the next day, too. I hope you can get some sense how hard I smashed the lens into the 2x4. There were no scratches at all. None. Even die hard Oakley fans will admit the lenses scratch just looking at them. Seek lenses are very scratch resistant.

Oakley lenses have no hydrophobic or oleophobic coating. You now need to apply it with an applicator and it's temporary. Seek lenses have a permanent hydrophobic and oleophobic coating. Fingerprints appear on Oakleys with the slightest touch and take scrubbing (and often soap and water) to remove. The Seek lenses barely collect fingerprints, and when they do, they wipe off easily. I have no fear of wiping them with on a shirt, since they're so scratch resistant. I would never wipe Oakleys on a shirt, they would be ruined. When swimming or around water, Oakley lenses will bead water and make it hard to see. With Seek lenses, the water rolls right off leaving the lens clear.

The scratch, fingerprint, and water resistance of the Seek lenses makes them far superior to Oakley lenses for my needs. I have both, I only wear Seek lenses.

The polycarbonate lenses fit very well.
All of the non-polarized lenses are polycarbonate, z87.1 impact rated, and 100% UV protection.
The blue mirror has a slight warm grey tint (a little rose and yellow) which blocks out blue light from sky and water and should be good for eye health.

I get no headaches, watery eyes, depth perception issues, visible distortions, unconscious impulse to remove the glasses, etc. These would all indicate unacceptable distortion in the lens that would cause temporary issues for the wearer. I have none of these. Other people might, I don't know. These lenses are clear enough for me to not have any issues.
I had some mixups on orders (more about that under the negatives) and Seek was very easy to work with and fully solved my problems. They are honest people to do business with.


And now the negatives:

The polarized lenses for most models are now triacetate. I do not recommend these for eye health reasons, which I'll elaborate later/elsewhere. I tried one pair of triacetate lenses and it did not fit correctly and also had a blemish. Avoid these, but at least getting it refunded from Seek was painless and they were good to work with.

If you want polarized polycarbonate lenses, you're now limited to Oakley, Fuse (I will try them next), and Ikon (very limited selection).

I had one lens delaminate the mirror coating while removing from my Bottle Rockets. I believe this is the same lens that got smacked very hard. The other lens was fine. I've also had Oakley lenses delaminate, so this isn't unique to aftermarket lenses. So it's hard to tell if this happened due to hitting the lens, or would have also happened to an Oakley lens. I probably won't remove these lenses as often, just in case.

The blue mirror is good for removing harmful blue light, but it makes the world look dull. Their mirror colors are more geared to looking good to people around you. They're not tuned to increase contrast of the wearer. These are probably not going to be as good for fishing or golf as Costa del Mar or Oakley G30, respectively. For general use, they're fine, though. The non-colored lenses (grey, black, silver mirror) or brown lenses would be better choices if you want neutral color or increased contrast.

The purple mirror is purple/brown rather than deep purple like Oakley, I'm not a fan. The apple green mirror is more like yellow, some people may like this but I was looking for more like Costa del Mar green.


I am not employed by Seek. I have no professional or business interest in them. I am not a shill. I spoke to a representative at Seek regarding some of my issues, hence I have some background on their product and process. I am a consumer just like everyone else here. Believe me or not, I don't care. Everything here related to science is factually accurate and everything that is opinion is my personal and unbiased opinion.

I recommend the non-polarized blue mirror and black/grey/silver Seek lenses. I prefer these to Oakley lenses. Other colors will be at the wearer's discretion. If they switch back to polycarbonate polarized lenses, I would recommend those but do not at this time. I will be trying Fuse for polycarbonate polarized lenses now.
 
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I was going to post something in the seek optics thread too, and also was too slow before it was locked. Instead I'll let it drop; the thread was closed for a reason; continuing it on another thread risks more of the same.
 
I'm new to the forum, can someone point me in the right direction in finding replacement lenses for Canteen 1st gen? Is there a forum I can refer to or someone that can cut lenses for Canteen 1.0? Thanks
 
Thanks!!

@Chris A Hardaway Think you can help me out with some lenses for Canteen 1.0?
Any idea what base Curvature they are? I think they might have been one of the early toric ones like gascan. But could be 6 or 8 base curve. If any of you guys know I'd appreciate a heads up.
Obviously I can cut lenses for them easily if I had the frame in hand.
 
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