A Glasses Story
I Need Glasses?
I had perfect vision all the way up until college. I think it was due to all the late nights and all the trying to take notes off the powerpoint while sitting in the back of class. My imperfect vision made itself known in my photography class. In class, we would take turns looking at and critiquing each other's photos. If it was your turn, you would hang your photos on the wall, often still warm from the hot press, and everyone would look at the prints. They would stand, walk from one to another, and then everyone would sit back down and make comments on them. Sometimes you would have to explain yourself. This time it was my turn, and my photos were tacked up on the wall. My professor and my classmates walked around, looking at each photograph. I tried to anticipate what the professor or people might say about the photos, and sometimes I knew if I had done well or done really badly. However, today all my guesses were completely off. The prof turned to me.
"Do you wear glasses?"
Who now? "Um... no."
"Your photos are all slightly out of focus!"
"Oh.. they are?"
"Yes, none of them are completely sharp. You need to get your eyes checked and get glasses so you can focus in the camera better."
I was surprised, but it turns out my professor was right. I got glasses and my photos got sharper. This was when I was using a manual focus camera of course.
The Market Markup
I was reminded of this story today because I went to the eye doctor and decided to order glasses online. You probably know that retail glasses places have exorbitant prices, attributed to optometrist skills and such. But I personally think it is just too much. I've traveled to various Asian countries and they are always so much cheaper there. Even though Asia is also the land of illegally cheap DVD's and sometimes questionable quality goods, I really think that the price of American eyeglasses is ridiculous. If I paid $80 for great glasses I wouldn't be complaining. But two, three hundred dollars for glasses that aren't scraping the bottom of the barrel? No way.
Online Shopping and Virtual Trying-On
After some online research, I found that there are a good number of online retailers of eyeglasses. There's even a blog dedicated to consolidating reviews of these sites. They vary in price range, quality, and of course, the glasses they offer. I decided to try out Zenni Optical, which has glasses in tiers from $8-$20 and some more expensive titanium and goggle models. At $8 I was quite tempted to get some crazy funky types, like huge white aviator frames, or bright red fake-looking glasses, or glittery green ones. But I exercised restraint, as well as sensibility and went for a black, slightly curved pair. Not extreme, but hopefully not blah. It was $8 and when adding anti-reflective coating ($5) and shipping ($5) came out to $20 total. Not bad, not bad I say! I did "try on" the glasses I was browsing by taking a pic of myself w/ my webcam with my face matching the angle that they make the glasses frames images. A few magic wand waves, lassoings, and resizings later in Photoshop and I could see a decent image of what I might look like w/ each pair! Someone should make a program that does this automatically.
Waiting Now...
Zenni has gotten both very positive and very negative reviews, but they are mostly positive, and they are super cheap, which is why I decided to give them a shot for my first time. Although the construction of the glasses isn't the same as a $300 designer pair and it is hard to know exactly what the frames look like on you, for $20 I'm willing to risk it. The glasses should arrive in a couple weeks. They are currently being constructed in China, where Zenni's factory is. I am optimistic and I'll update when they get here.
I had perfect vision all the way up until college. I think it was due to all the late nights and all the trying to take notes off the powerpoint while sitting in the back of class. My imperfect vision made itself known in my photography class. In class, we would take turns looking at and critiquing each other's photos. If it was your turn, you would hang your photos on the wall, often still warm from the hot press, and everyone would look at the prints. They would stand, walk from one to another, and then everyone would sit back down and make comments on them. Sometimes you would have to explain yourself. This time it was my turn, and my photos were tacked up on the wall. My professor and my classmates walked around, looking at each photograph. I tried to anticipate what the professor or people might say about the photos, and sometimes I knew if I had done well or done really badly. However, today all my guesses were completely off. The prof turned to me.
"Do you wear glasses?"
Who now? "Um... no."
"Your photos are all slightly out of focus!"
"Oh.. they are?"
"Yes, none of them are completely sharp. You need to get your eyes checked and get glasses so you can focus in the camera better."
I was surprised, but it turns out my professor was right. I got glasses and my photos got sharper. This was when I was using a manual focus camera of course.
The Market Markup
I was reminded of this story today because I went to the eye doctor and decided to order glasses online. You probably know that retail glasses places have exorbitant prices, attributed to optometrist skills and such. But I personally think it is just too much. I've traveled to various Asian countries and they are always so much cheaper there. Even though Asia is also the land of illegally cheap DVD's and sometimes questionable quality goods, I really think that the price of American eyeglasses is ridiculous. If I paid $80 for great glasses I wouldn't be complaining. But two, three hundred dollars for glasses that aren't scraping the bottom of the barrel? No way.
Online Shopping and Virtual Trying-On
After some online research, I found that there are a good number of online retailers of eyeglasses. There's even a blog dedicated to consolidating reviews of these sites. They vary in price range, quality, and of course, the glasses they offer. I decided to try out Zenni Optical, which has glasses in tiers from $8-$20 and some more expensive titanium and goggle models. At $8 I was quite tempted to get some crazy funky types, like huge white aviator frames, or bright red fake-looking glasses, or glittery green ones. But I exercised restraint, as well as sensibility and went for a black, slightly curved pair. Not extreme, but hopefully not blah. It was $8 and when adding anti-reflective coating ($5) and shipping ($5) came out to $20 total. Not bad, not bad I say! I did "try on" the glasses I was browsing by taking a pic of myself w/ my webcam with my face matching the angle that they make the glasses frames images. A few magic wand waves, lassoings, and resizings later in Photoshop and I could see a decent image of what I might look like w/ each pair! Someone should make a program that does this automatically.
Waiting Now...
Zenni has gotten both very positive and very negative reviews, but they are mostly positive, and they are super cheap, which is why I decided to give them a shot for my first time. Although the construction of the glasses isn't the same as a $300 designer pair and it is hard to know exactly what the frames look like on you, for $20 I'm willing to risk it. The glasses should arrive in a couple weeks. They are currently being constructed in China, where Zenni's factory is. I am optimistic and I'll update when they get here.
