5280 Scuba - How to Buy a Scuba or Snorkel Mask

hey everybody this is Freddy with 5280 scuba comm did you know the mask was the number one item that controls the quality of your experience it can make or break your dive or your snorkeling trip how do you pick the right mask we'll get to that in just a minute it's a challenge everybody thinks it's easy because if you just put it on your face and you can tighten it enough and and it'll stay then you've got a mask that fits but that's so not true the mask is the number one piece of equipment that makes or breaks your experience with a mask that's constantly leaking or fogging all the time or pinching or pushing on your skin somewhere it can just drive you nuts and make you just not even want to finish the dive or you know give up on the vacation I have people that share that with me all the time so we actually take the time to teach people how a mask fits and we thought we would try to do it here on the site so you can better choose for yourself the first thing about a mask is because it is the number one piece of equipment if you're gonna save money on dive equipment don't try to save money on the mask spend the money get the quality it will last you and last you and last you much longer than a cheap piece of junk so what are masks made of today what materials should you choose don't buy rubber don't buy PVC some of those manufacturers that make him out of that are gonna hate me for this but I'm trying to protect you here rubber degrades in the closet at home it just dries out and you can use your mask one time put it in the closet three years later go on vacation and the strap breaks or the mask is starting to crack they just dry out PVC gets hard over time and it's really just a cheap material to pump out a molded mask that somebody will pay money for but if you buy a good quality mask made out of good quality materials silicone high grade silicone will last you twenty to twenty-five years without problems and if that's if you take care of it so you don't have to buy a mask every four or five years or every time you go on a major vacation and then how much are you going to use it is also determined on the quality of the materials that you choose the proper way to fit a mask starts with an emotional fit and what I mean by emotional fit is how do you feel wearing it not how it feels on your skin but how do you feel wearing it this is very important because the wrong mask can make people a little fidgety or perhaps have some anxiety so the way I start with people is I will bring a clear mask and a black mask when you go to the movies they turn the lights out why so you can focus on the screen a little bit some people watch TV at night in their living room in the dark so they can focus on the screen a little bit that's the black skirt when you wear the black you emotionally feel better it allows you to focus on what you're there to look at when you wear a frosted or a clear it allows a little more light on that's the the person that has the light on in the room at night right this allows more light in and so it's gonna make a difference to you if you were to put black clear black clear people after two or three times trying that they come up with an answer they oh this one feels much better so that's where we start with the fit has to be emotionally next it has to sit on your face right what's right the problem is most people over tighten their mask they pull the strap too tight it sucked the mask to their face and what they're doing is they're conforming the mask to the face or perhaps the face to the mask the problem with that is it can cut off circulation it can give you nosebleeds and give you headaches and it's just not comfortable you come up with a big old crease around your face and that's not the way it should fit it should really just sit on your face lightly barely snug at all and a proper fitting mask you won't have the line you'll be able to let it touch your skin all the way around and that's the result of the seals so I'm going to show you every good quality mask has two seals it has the outer rim of the skirt it also has if you can see it here I don't know which will show easier clear or black but it has another lip or seal on the inside that's every bit as important as the outside seal if you don't have both seals fitting your face your mask does not fit your face and it's not a good mask for you so when I say that you'll have the outside will fit you fine somebody will say oh yeah it looks great you can inhale through your nose a little bit suction will hold it on your face but if you cannot see the seal touching your skin all the way around so as an example if I was to put this on you should be able to look in a mirror or have somebody help you and see that inner seal touch your skin all the way around all the way around okay the problem areas if the mask is too narrow for your face it may cut off your eye sockets or if perhaps you have a wider eye socket you want to get a seal that's gonna go around the outer edges somewhere if it cuts you right on the eyebrows quite often if you if you scrunch your face at all you're gonna have a gap right in here and it's not going to seal in there and water will come trickling down so the inner seal is every bit as important as the outer seal then the the part just under the nose you'll notice that some are much longer and some are much shorter you need enough lip left over when you're wearing a mask so that the regulator or the snorkel in your mouth doesn't create a gap underneath okay and if you have deep laughs lines and you're holding regulator in your mouth it may exaggerate that as well so good soft silicone it's gonna seal much better if the inner seal matches the outer seal may both touch your skin you have a good fitting mask a light inhale through your nose should hold it on your face without you helping at all how about somebody with a mustache like myself a couple of tricks first of all if you have a narrow bridge under the nose here rather than a big thick one then that's gonna be a little nicer to fit on your face it's gonna be a little closer to the skin you can shave just a little bit under your nose directly just a line underneath your nose ride the mask up just a touch and that should help if you don't want to shave your mask off let me shave your mustache off also there are products you don't want to use Vaseline okay Vaseline is not really healthy for silicone so use the product it's just a couple of bucks it's in a stick that you rub on much like the lip stuff and it's a waxy substance and it coats the mustache and gets kind of in there a little bit and then the mask can seal right to it that works really really well and of course if it leaks just a touch it's not a big deal you just clear it which brings me to the next part some masks will have a purge valve underneath some don't I think if you look at footage of professional divers instructors dive masters videographers photographers underwater things like that you're never going to see one of those people wearing a mask with a purge valve it is a hole in your mask yet it has a little thin flap of silicone over it that can keep the water out with a brand new and a perfect situation it can get sand in it it can get corroded by salt that builds up underneath because it doesn't rinse well it can warp in the Sun when you lay your mask on the boat or on the beach and then it's no good anymore throw the mask away I mean really you could replace those sometimes but my advice to people that want to buy a mask for that will last them twenty to twenty-five years no purge just purge the mask the way you're supposed to okay so let's talk a little bit about the shape of the mask everybody's face is different the shape of the mask can make a big difference on their face and how you see underwater you'll notice some have a little bit more square on the outer edges some more round on the edges some are taller top-to-bottom some have two lenses some have one lens what the heck's the difference what's the best the best is really what works best for you that being said some of the advantages of these design features are peripheral vision you can see a little bit more to the sides when you have a wider mask a square edge closer to your face you're closer to your eyes you have a greater peripheral vision when you have a taller lens top to bottom it allows you a greater range of motion with your eyes rather than using your neck because there can be fatigue when you're raising your head all the time while you're trying to swim horizontal underwater and you look down and you look up and you look down and you look up this mask by 5280 has a very tall lens from top to bottom it's wonderful underwater when you're looking kind of diagonal you can still see up straight and you can see the very bottom directly underneath you and this particular mask is canted just a little bit so you can see the lens aims downward on a straight up face and that even enhances that comfort more for the angle of the neck now you have some as I mentioned with two lenses and some with one some people would think this would give you more vision not necessarily so a two lens mask is often called a low-volume and it's closer to your eyes so you cannot see that piece in the middle the advantage of that is that if you wear prescription lenses this is the type of mask that they're going to put the lens in for you we do that at our shop all the time you give us your prescription we can give you a mask that fits your prescription and you can see well we just replace those two lenses in an extreme case we can send it out and have it ground with an exacting prescription for those really tough to fit glasses the single lens if it is a mask that sits away from your eyes just a little bit more it enhances the ability to go back and forth without seeing that centerpiece okay we'll talk a little bit about the strap a good silicone mask is gonna come with a good silicone strap it will last you 20 to 25 years so why would you ever want to change a strap a lot of people with hair like to use a fabric strap we call them slap straps they're coated with a microfiber on the inside and what it does for you is it just doesn't pull your hair so when your hair's wet and the silicones grippy and it grabs the hair and it's uncomfortable and it also allows you to hold your hair back a little bit if you have longer hair so the way you put the mask on with a silicone strap usually is that you put it on the back and stretch your mask forward with a slap strap what you do is when you put the mask on your face you slide the strap back along your hair and it holds it back very comfortable very popular addition to a mask just to increase the comfort now let's talk a little bit about care and maintenance what most people don't realize and few people tell them is that when you buy a mask that's brand spanking new it comes from the factory with a coating on the lens it was a lubricant in the factory but it dries kind of hard not greasy that has to come off of there even though you can't feel it on your mask when it's brand new you can see right through it it's clear you don't see anything it's on there the problem is that your defog won't stick to the lens therefore your mask will fog up terrible you need to take a quality product like Poseidon pearl polish or mask scrub something like that that's made for cleaning masks I can't emphasize this enough because so many people want to cut some corners so what do they do they use soft scrub or they use shampoo or they use dishwashing liquid and they'll think that it's fine you know but it's really not and the reason why is for one a lot of those products not healthy for the sea and when you put it on your mask some of its going in the sea but for to the modern masks today like this one for example you don't see a frame it's not in a metal frame like the old ones though silicone is actually molded to the lens so when you put a product in there and you're squeezing it around and you're trying to clean it it's degrading the seal between the silicone and the lens itself you can see it on people's masks when it's dry you can see this white line all the way around the edge in that soap that got in there and it's now not allowing the silicone to seal directly to the mask whereas a mask scrub product and a good defog product and all those they actually enhance that seal so you don't want to spit in your mask you want to use defog and part of the reason of that is because the bacteria gets in the seals in the seams and it grows your eyes have saltwater in them so whether you're diving in the ocean in saltwater or fresh water that bacteria grows and it can cause all kinds of nasty problems what to save seven bucks defog lasts so long and it's so cheap you just buy the right product to do the right thing and many of the defog today are so quality that you don't have to do it every single dive you can defog your lens and it'll last for five six ten dives sometimes so I get the right product do the right thing by your mask it'll last a long time again you always want to rinse them with fresh water tap water that's whether you're in a swimming pool with high chlorine or whether you're in salt water that's going to preserve the material and when you take care of a high quality silicone mask it will last you twenty years no problem well I hope I've covered all the selection items that will help you find just the right mask for you you've made it this far thanks for watching and if you have any tips for us leave them in the comments below

Channel: 5280 Scuba

Views: 104,798

Rating: 4.9234667 out of 5

Keywords: Mask Fitting, snorkeling mask, diving mask, Mask Technolgy

Id: fA_gQpyZBJM

Length: 14min 32sec (872 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 07 2017