It is recommended to use UV blocking eyeware when doing reflected ultraviolet photography with light sources that output UV at a greater intensity than natural sunlight. In this test I'll be comparing the UVA blocking of UVEX Super OTG (Over The Glasses) safety glasses, my normal eyeglasses that I wear all the time, and a cheap pair of Cycling / Sports glasses.
If you'd prefer a video version of this blog post, you can find that here: Protective Glasses For Ultraviolet Photography.
UVEX Super OTG (Over The Glasses) safety glasses
Starting with the UVEX glasses, these are quite a bit more expensive than generic safety glasses but explicitly claim to block UV. As someone that wears glasses, these are also good in that I can just add them over my normal glasses. The arms aren't hinged, and just bend to fit your head.
The test setup here is the glasses placed on a sheet of PTFE and a full spectrum flash on the right, pointed at the glasses. This is photographed using a full spectrum camera with the Baader UV pass filter. We can see the glasses are doing a good job at blocking the UV.
Standard glasses
My normal glasses are meant to be UV blocking, but as you can see here they don't do a great job. Based on the colour I would say they are probably blocking some UV, but not the longer wavelength UV.
Cycling / Sports glasses
Looking on AliExpress and eBay I wasn't able to find any cheap plain transparent UV blocking glasses. However, they sell plenty of sunglasses that claim to block UV. The particular pair I bought were titled SCVCN Cycling Sunglasses Men MTB Road Driving Bike Glasses Outdoor Sports Women Bicycle Cycling UV400 Protective Glasses New
.
We can see here that they do indeed block UV.
However, they are tinted blue and also reduce the light you receive, which means they are not great when trying to look at your camera's LCD. Having said that, the reduction in light of the glasses is somewhat useful for mitigating the blast of visible light when taking UV photos with a full spectrum flash. So you could just put them on when taking the actual photo and then take them off again afterwards. But they're not designed to fit in front of eyeglasses, and so not great for me.
Near-Infrared blocking test
I decided to also quickly test the glasses for IR blocking, though as you can see none of them do this. Which isn't that surprising, but I thought it was worth checking.
UVEX Super OTG safety glasses
Standard eyeglasses
SCVCN Cycling Sunglasses
Leave a Reply