by waaytoomuchintothis » Sun Apr 03, 2016 4:06 pm
My eyes have been slowly getting worse the closer I get to cataract surgery (that I can't afford). I have been through many magnifiers, lighted magnifiers, and jeweler's loupes. The best advice I can give you is to ignore bargains. Just don't bother. Either the magnifier isn't glass which sucks, or the magnifier is too heavy for the cheapo spring stand and they flop, just before you take a pair of channel locks to the screws and strip them. Go to amazon and look for high magnification, glass optics, on steel spring stands. If you can find them, get one with a metal base, especially a heavy platform base so you don't have to screw it down. Artist and architectural drafting suppliers are a good source, as well as engineering drafting suppliers. I have found that the magnifier is best used as a stand alone (so you can scoot it around), and adjustable stand lighting makes it better.
Mt father was an architect, so when he died, I had all these lights and magnifiers from his 84 year old drawing table to add to my own. This embarrassment of riches really educated me as to how crappy my lighting was. If you are using incandescent (best for painting, but you can always go outside to get the color correct), use 100 watt bulbs (hard to find- I bought a case of 100 watt Reveal bulbs when they announced that we weren't allowed to have them anymore). If you are using a lower wattage or some form of flourescent, get as close as you can to 1200 lumens. The 100w Reveals are 1260. At 75w Reveal you are down to 780 lumens, but that's still pretty good.
But, in conclusion I have to say that the high-powered visor type magnifier is still the best if you wear glasses, and maybe even if you don't. If you wear bifocals the visor is pretty much mandatory for small stuff, even positioning decals. Just don't fall for the "lighted" visors. Useless. And they are so heavy they won't stay on. Good luck!