Was just wondering if there is any "cost-friendly" way of avoiding eye damage when firing up high-power lamps. I don't have nor do I plan to buy a welding mask, so I wanted to ask if you guys use any specific techniques to be able to look at your lamps without blinding yourselves. I currently use a pair of very dark sunglasses, but I still avoid direct eye exposure.

Any ideas? Thanks. 

Hiya, we use these, I'm sure that there is a similar vendor over on your side of the pond. 

Thanks, I'll look into it. 

No probs, glad that I could help, you can always buy another set of the dark lenses to replace the clear ones and make them really dark.!!

Technically you shouldn’t get arc eye unless you’re viewing something like a Philips Arenavision lamp directly?
I just used two pairs of sunglasses on top of one another back in the day, this way you could still see the colour of halide arcs without looking through green welding kit.

I use the same ND1000 filter that I use to make lamp photos. Gives high quality true to life color image. Cheap options - a glass from welder's helmet. Extremely cheap at hardware store, but distorts color to green-yellow. Other options? Solar eclipse glasses? Sure not needed for its intended purpose any more for a lot of time

If you have solar eclipse glasses you can get a really close look at the shape of the arc, but you can't really see anything else around you.

Eclipse glasses are said to pass 0.00032 parts of light, that's 1:3125. About 3x stronger than ND1000. I can look at all my MH arcs with ND1000, but some, like small 150W ones are a bit 'too much'. So 1:3125 might be slightly better.


 

I actually got eclipse glasses for last week's eclipse. It's certainly bizarre when all you see in your peripheral vision (say, on your shirt) is blinding light, while all you see through the eclipse glasses is one concentrated point. (I tested on a 100WH lamp yesterday.)

Thank you for the suggestions! 

I don't have nor do I plan to buy a welding mask

You should, you can buy only welding glass replacement (it's cheaper).

I have a #9 shade welding glass that I use. It's was intended as a replacement glass for a welding helmet, so it wasn't too expensive.

Can you get arc eye from looking at coated/diffuse HID lamps?

Or is it mainly just the clear ones?

Who knows. I'm no arc eye expert, but my eyes hurt from looking at any concentrated light source for too long.

Though coated MV is probably the easiest to look at. Even clear isn't half bad. It's metal halide and HPS that annihilate my eyed.

It is just not wise to look at bright light sources for prolonged time because the eyes are sure not replaceable

There are enough idiots in the world who damaged their retina by looking at the sun, and many HID lamps arcs are at about the same brightness.

It is not arc eye, as was said before. Until you are messing with germicidal or not UV-blocked pure quartz lamps, or arcs in the air, there is not much UV to cause this.

Arc eye hurts on the surface of the eyes (and skin) and is generally recoverable, at least if not extreme doses. But retina burns from lasers and sun are permanent.

 

Correct, better known as erythemal radiation, but as I understand it, you won’t get erythemal radiation exposure from viewing a clear mercury lamp as most of this radiation is filtered out by the outer jacket?, its only the bare arc tube itself that can harm skin and eyes.