Not wearing goggles

LaZeRz said:

I've had a 445 reflect into my eyes from a distance... I saw yellow for about 20 minutes.

Luckily it didn't give me any blindspots.

Click to expand...

Personally I see yellow always after seeing the dot of a 445nm... even from a safe distance/low power. Never for that long though, half a minute to a minute max.

I will chime in a little here for the younger members.
Consider this : As you get older your vision will naturally decrease and change. The expected lifetime of a person is (at this time) at least 80 years or more of age. If you take fantastic care of your eyes (UV protection, safety glasses, avoid long sessions in front of computer, etc.) you can probably expect your vision to deteriorate to about half what it was when you were in your prime. Now THINK ABOUT THAT for a minute or two. Chances are you will only be able to see EVERYTHING about half as good.
So if you damage your vision to the point where you can notice it when you are young, it will be amplified by time and be a serious problem when you are old ! DON'T DO IT !
When you are old and can't do things physically that you did when you were young the only thing left is to enjoy what you see around you. (If you are young you won't believe me or understand me until you are too old to change it. That's the way of things.)
Take these words of caution to heart. You only get the two eyes for your entire lifetime. If you don't plan on growing old then don't worry about it. Blast away. Otherwise, a little extra caution will only take a few seconds that may add years to your vision.
:tsk:

Thats an interesting thought, but i doubt the idea of amplifying problems is actually true. If you were to suffer a blind spot from laser exposure, there is no reason to believe that this problem will get any worse decades later. In fact, i'd say the opposite will happen: with time your brain will compensate better and better for the lost area of vision, to the point where you will not notice anymore.

Obviously this is no excuse to put yourself or anyone at risk, but i think the concept of a blind spot getting worse when you age is inherently false.

If your seeing weird colors or temporary bind spots you are overloading something in your eyes. I would consider that unnecessary wear and tear...

I've had some eye strain from lasers... Although that was after playing TF2 for 6 hours straight, so I'm guessing it was unrelated to the lasers .

I guess the question is if that is doing any actual, permanent, damage. Doing something that causes you discomfort or causes temporary problems is not to be recommended, but its not a true hazard just because of that either.

Perhaps we should make a difference between effects from longer term exposure that cause things like color changes and temporary blind spots, and damage that is done so quickly you literally cannot blink your eyes to prevent it.

Obviously there -is- a grey area in between where you can get visual artifacts that last longer than a few minutes yet disappear over the course of days or weeks, but most exposures lead either to very short lasting problems or to permanent injury.

I remember a member here not so long ago who dropped off the site
after his eye doc found burns in his eye..

http://laserpointerforums.com/f53/ever-wondered-what-retinal-burns-look-like-38540.html

I would never take the goggles off my eyes with a 1W laser, even if it's 'safe' to do so when pointing to distance, just because I don't want to adopt a bad habit of not wearing goggles.

snoutke said:

I would never take the goggles off my eyes with a 1W laser, even if it's 'safe' to do so when pointing to distance, just because I don't want to adopt a bad habit of not wearing goggles.

Click to expand...

I'm all for safety, but if that's the case, why even bother with higher powered lasers. You can't see the beam in goggles, just about the only thing you can do is burn stuff.

snoutke said:

I would never take the goggles off my eyes with a 1W laser, even if it's 'safe' to do so when pointing to distance, just because I don't want to adopt a bad habit of not wearing goggles.

Click to expand...

Thats an excellent philosophy. People often take 1W of laser energy all to lightly. It always has to be highly respected, especially indoors.

You could get away with some star pointing though.

I didn't see any pictures in this link but here is one>

wannaburn said:

I remember a member here not so long ago who dropped off the site
after his eye doc found burns in his eye..

http://laserpointerforums.com/f53/ever-wondered-what-retinal-burns-look-like-38540.html

Click to expand...

What would be the point of having a 1 watt laser pointer if you are never able to see the beam?

Surely you need to be careful, but you can set up a stationary beam indoors just fine, and take the goggles off once its set and stable. Outdoors shooting into the night sky would be quite safe too, even moving the beam around... its just a matter of avoiding any situation where you can get some unexpected reflection.

These lasers are just too powerful to wave around indoors with a chance of getting a reflection from a window or something glossy. A typical window reflects about 4%, and its probably flat enough to keep the beam in decent shape - so that would be 40 mW straight to your eyes, enough to do permanent damage in a split second.

"Obviously this is no excuse to put yourself or anyone at risk, but i think the concept of a blind spot getting worse when you age is inherently false. "

While your point may be true the concept that I was trying to put forward is that as you age you WILL experience diminished visual acuity. How much it lessens is determined by a number of factors of which you have the ability to control when younger.
I have a blind spot from when I was a kid. Has my brain learned how to compensate ? Sure it has. I have a very difficult time telling where that blind spot actually sits in my field of vision most of the time. The problem is that the area around that spot has begun to suffer as I get older. I have a surprisingly diminished ability to make out details in a growing area of my vision. These effects have become more & more noticeable as I age. What I didn't notice at all when I was in my 20's now is distracting at least once a week in my late 40's. And I find that I need my vision more now at work to read the labels on the top racks and the likes as I just can't monkey climb up a level to get closer.
And these aren't issues that can simply be corrected by glasses. The damage from when I was a kid is compounded by age to become more than what it was initially. Am I going blind ? No. Is it a royal pain in the @$$ to not be able to clearly see whatever I am looking at directly ? You bet ! Has getting older made it worse or more noticeable ? Damn straight it has.
So take that as an example and a warning. Always play safe !
If you want to know any more about how it screws up life just ask me. I have been surprised at where it makes a difference.

"What would be the point of having a 1 watt laser pointer if you are never able to see the beam? "
Wouldn't it be safe to use some goggles of a slightly lower OD for viewing the beam while offering some "flash" protection ? That way you could still make out the beam as a lower brightness but still have the benefit of some protection from an unintentional reflection.

Would i be right to assume you have some vision disorder thats not just part of the 'normal' aging process?

Most people will suffer reduced vision with age, due to presbyopia, cataracts and such, but these conditions don't have anything to do with the retina or any previous damage to it.

Also, the rod cells are partially lost with age, which may make a problem worse, especially if its something like a blind spot in the peripheral vision. This wouldn't hinder vision for most tasks, but i can imagine it would be annoying under some circumstances.

Flaminpyro said:

I didn't see any pictures in this link but here is one>

Click to expand...

Thanks.. I remembered the thread but noticed the pis were missing.
The one you posted looks about right

Benm said:

Well, the obvious answer would be 'no': as long as you dont do anything stupid or harmful, there is no need for glasses are you're not at risk. But this is the same logic as "you don't need to wear a seatbelt, as long as you dont crash into anything or get rammed".

The problem with these things is that accidents happen when you do not expect them to. If you're shining into trees, its not very likely to give a reflection, unless someone put up a mirror on a tree at the exact wrong angle - unlikely, not impossible.

Click to expand...

FINALLY the answer to my question! If I'm in a "controlled environment" and taking extreme caution I should be OK, right? Yes I am very fond of my vision but I don't have ANY money right now, I was going to get the DL ones but with postage I might as well get an eagle pair :/ I'm using 650nm so if anyone can find the appropriate eagle pair, link me to it please, for the sake of my eyes!