One of the things that I like about the Donegan Optivisor is that the lenses are made of ground and polished optical glass, not plastic. I think for the price, the optics are great in an Optivisor.
For a long while I used the MegaView that came with three different magnification plastic lenses. But after living with it for a few years, I’ve gone back to the Optivisor. I really like the quality of the optics and the glass lenses are less prone to scratching than plastic lenses.
I have found that most of my college age students use a #3 or #4 Optivisor lens. My eyes have gotten to a place that I use a #7.
I’m not sure if you can, but it would be great if you could try one out before purchasing to determine what lens is best for you.
I’m a little late to the party here, apologies for that, but I wanted to add something about the need for tinted eye protection. As mentioned above, I have never found a need for tint protection when soldering. However, over the past couple years I started making my own small silver and gold balls. I found that I was seeing green dots for a while after doing that. I knew this was a problem and tried my welding mask - which I use for casting. It was too dark and I couldn’t see what I was doing. In fact, on one trial my torch blew the tiny piece of metal out of the pit I had made in my charcoal block. I never knew it was gone and all I did was create a deeper pit until I figured it out! Around that time someone here mentioned rose didymium lenses for this problem. I bought a clip-on set of rose didymium lenses since I wear glasses. Problem solved, no more green dots. And I could still see what I was doing extremely well. I don’t use them often but they were a great buy.
There have been a number of recent threads there about eye safety. I have been taught that didymium glasses are designed to filter out light from molten glass, not molten metal, including gold and silver. .
The green welding glasses are the proper type eye protection for melting gold and silver balls. #3 is the lightest. You could try those.
Also, a trick that works for me while doing fine jewelry work with green welding glasses, is to do the work under a bright bench lamp. I can see what I’m doing fairly well that way.
I tried to find information to show the difference between didymium glasses and welding glasses. This was the best that I could find.
I personally would never recommend didymium safety glasses for melting gold or silver.
I got my Leica scope from GRS. Pricey, but perfect, For bench work, I also use my Craft Optics, which are fit to my trifocal prescription.that means I can flip the little scope up and safely walk across the studio. I do get weird looks from the UPS person when I open the door with them on,