Today’s Post by Joe Farace
My grandmother is over eighty and still doesn’t need glasses. Drinks right out of the bottle.—Henny Youngman
Many photographers, including myself, wear glasses. I guess that’s why camera manufacturers invented built-in diopter corrections! As far as I can tell—and please correct me if I’m wrong—the first cameras to have adjustable diopter correction, as opposed to screw-in viewfinder adapters, were the Olympus OM’s (3 and 4) and the Nikon F4, which is currently my dream film camera.
I’ve been wearing glasses since the 9th grade. After attending a small Catholic elementary school I found myself in large public school classes and, all of a sudden, I couldn’t read the blackboard. I usually do all my photography without glasses using the camera’s built-in diopters to correct the DSLR’s viewfinder or the EVF in my mirrorless camera. When I’m driving or photographing outdoors, I typically wear glasses, as I did in the shoot featured in tomorrow’s post and where I typically end up having the glasses perched on my forehead, which brings me to…
If there’s one thing that all of us glasses wearers, especially with sunglasses, have in common it’s dirty glasses. Oh, there are all kinds of expensive wipes and fluids they’ll be glad to sell you at the place where your glasses were made but I’d like to introduce you to something different and, in the long run, less expensive.
Get a Peep At That!
Peeps are made by the same people who make LensPens, a lens cleaning tool that I consider to be an indispensable photo accessory. I’ve been using LensPens for thirty years. Right now I keep one set of (red) Peeps next to my iMac in my office and another on the coffee table in what Mary euphemistically calls our “home theater room” and where I like to watch movies—with nice clean glasses.
Peeps are compact, meaning they can slip in your pocket or even the LowePro fanny pack I keep my Olympus Pen F in when I take it out for a PhotoWalk. Peeps are compact, measuring just 4x1x1-inches and are available in seven colors for the fashion conscious, They have the same Carbon compound that’s used in LensPen products and is formulated to handle the fingerprint oils on lenses, filters, screens and, in this case, eyeglass lenses.
Cleaning eyeglasses with Peeps is a simple two-step process: First, you use the retractable goats-hair brush to remove any loose dust or potentially abrasive particles on the lenses.This step is critical to protect any lens that has anti-reflective coatings that are used in prescription eyeglasses. Second, you slide out the arms from the holder and clean the lens with smooth circular motions. If any smudges remain, LensPen suggests you gently breathe on the lenses and repeat. Each time the arms slide back into the holder, the carbon on the cleaning tips is replenished and cleaning tips can be recharged up to 500 times. Peeps sell for less than $20 and come in different colors .
Knockoff alert: LensPen provides safe, environmentally friendly glass and optical cleaning products.The cleaning tip used on LensPen products have a unique carbon compound that’s designed to remove fingerprints and assorted schmutz from your cameras and lenses. Beware of imitations and fake copies of LensPen products that sometimes have nothing on the cleaning tip and can damage the lenses they are meant to clean.
LensPen is a long-time sponsor of my sites and blogs but I was using their products long before I even had a blog. Mary bought me my first LensPen in 1994 after I acquired a Nikon N90s film-based SLR! I would like to thank LensPen for their continued support.
If you enjoyed today’s blog post and would like to buy Joe a cup of Earl Grey tea ($2.50), click here. And if you do, thanks so very much.