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INITIAL IMPRESSIONS
General
The Sunglasses and lenses arrived on Thursday, December
22. When I finally had time to devote to exploring what
Smith had sent me, I was quickly impressed with the sheer quantity of
items included. In the main package were the frames, four pair of
lenses, a soft case, a Smith "S" logo sticker and two documents. In
the smaller box, there were a pair of lenses, a small soft pouch to store
them in, another "S" logo sticker, and one more document. In total,
I received seven sunglass related items, three documents, and two
stickers. This is not my first pair of technical / higher end
sunglasses. I have owned Bollé,
Serengeti, Oakley and Gargoyle sunglasses over the years. This is the first
time I have seen so much included with a pair.
The Factor frames are very light and fit my face
marvelously. Much better, in fact than I had expected. Finding glasses to fit my face is a bit of a challenge
since my head is a bit larger than average. In addition, and as you
may be able to see in the picture at the top of this report, my eyes are
slightly closer set than an 'average' person's eyes. This combination
tends to make most manufacturer's sunglasses unsuitable for my use.
The Factor frames, however, fit the width of my face quite well while
still allowing the lens to fully protect my field of vision.
Lenses
My experience with the myriad of lenses provide for
this test has included time with the Ignitor, RC-36 (Rose Copper),
Polarized True Color Gray, and a short amount of night time use with the
Yellow. I will describe my impressions of each in turn below;
Yellow - Used at night in the country for
driving. The yellow tint provided to all light sources was somewhat
distracting and seemed to make oncoming car headlights too intense for
comfort.
Polarized True Color Gray - Used only once in
slightly overcast daytime conditions. The polarization of these
lenses was quite noticeable and very helpful while driving. I found
them to be quite dark, and in the conditions of the day the level of light
reduction was too much for my comfort.
RC-36 (Rose Copper) - These lenses are slightly
darker than the Ignitor lens, but are otherwise quite similar. They
are the closest to my previous pair of sunglasses, and therefore are the
ones my eyes 'recognize' most readily. I wish that these were
polarized, but at this point, that is the only thing I can say I would
improve about them.
Ignitor - I have used this tint far more than
any of the others so far. This tint is quite comfortable in
conditions ranging from full rain and heavy overcast through partly cloudy
winter sky all the way to full, bright, winter sun.
I took one picture showing the same scene (part of my neighborhood) in
both natural sky conditions and then with the lens of the camera filtered
with the Ignitor lens. I then photoshoped the two images side by
side to show the viewer one scene with and without the lens. This
photograph doesn't fully show the benefit of this lens to the user's eye
though. I have included it here, but I must caution the reader that
the photograph shows the Ignitor tinted side as *Much* darker than it
actually is. I did not edit the image in any way other than to
splice the two sides together, because I didn't want to falsify the
photograph, but as an example, I have gone from my car, to the grocery,
and back without ever realizing I kept the sunglasses on the whole time.
I have never lost awareness of my sunglasses so completely that I didn't
become aware of them after transitioning from sunlight to fluorescent
light before. To me, this is one of the highest complements of a
pair of sunglasses. I suspect that I might also want these to be
polarized, but I'm going to reserve judgment until the end of this test to
see what summer conditions are like with this lens.
Frames
The Factor frames are arced to conform to the rounded
shape of (my) face. The frames form an almost circular shape.
This allows the frames to only contact my face at the bridge of my nose,
and along the sides of my head at the top of my ears. Additionally,
if I push them back
all the way, the entire top of the frame contacts my eyebrows. This
has been an issue in previous pairs of sunglasses I have owned. The
heat of my exertion in exercise sometimes caused condensation on the
lenses due to lack of ventilation at the top of the sunglasses.
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