Magnum Mania!

Mostly in later seasons, when TM is wearing glasses, it appears on close ups the lenses are flat, but on further out shots they are the curved (convex) lenses you's expect. This is especially noticable with his reading glasses which always appear flat, and the brown outdoorsman aviators he wears a lot in season 7 and 8. I don't think I noticed this with the gold framed Ray Ban outdoorsmans. I'm wondering why they'd do this. Maybe something to do with reflections in the lenses? I dunno.
Has anyone else noticed this?

I haven't noticed it, but my wife has made several comments on how ugly she thinks the glasses are and how she didn't think they fit Magnum's style.

I could be wrong, and if so, anyone feel free to correct me, but it is my understanding that "flat glasses" are a dead giveaway that they are not prescription glasses at all. Back in the "olden" days (B&W), when it was decided that someone needed to be a glasses wearer, the easiest way to accomplish such was to have a pair of glasses me with plain, no-prescription glass, which ended up being flat, like a piece of a window. So flat glasses to me scream "prop." Look for how many times you see this in old movies. Perhaps technology has caught up with this since the 1980s even, so better fake non-prescription glasses now can actually look like prescription glasses. But I can see how any curvature could distort vision, so they stick with flat? Still it always is an obvious "fake" to me when I see it.

golf

Golf and others,

I wear reading glasses. They have flat lenses. I believe that convex lenses are for people with astigmatism which means that the eye shape is too oblong.

I agree that the reading glasses Magnum wore were probably clear.

Man, those were some ugly glasses. So large!

The glasses style back in the 80s was large and plastic. How bizarre. However at the time they did not seem strange at all.

Cheers.

I've have to agree with Golf on this one. Any curvature of the lens will change the focal point of the image. I also wear reading glasses, and they aren't quite flat. If they were flat, the lens would not magnify images. The lens is pretty small, however, so the curvature isn't very noticable.

Here is a pretty simple explanation:
http://science.howstuffworks.com/lens.htm

Lenses aside, TM's glasses were pretty awful.

When Magnum started to wear the reading glasses it didn't bother me as much as when he would wear the aviator sun glasses sitting way too far up on his nose!

Steve,

That's the only way I've ever seen anyone wear aviators, all the way up. Sunglasses usually go most of the way to the forehead to prevent the sun from shining over into the eyes.

As for the reading glasses, I would prefer the ones Higgins wore. These were once called 'cheaters' and the lenses are flat (maybe not exactly flat but more flat than convex). Those large glasses worn by Magnum were the size of Rhode Island. I also noticed the glasses worn by Maggie were large. That was just the style of the day. I like today's smaller glasses.