Your script can change
Every Hogies loupe can be worn over your own prescription glasses, or fitted with a magnetic prescription carrier. Either way the correction sits separate from the optics, so a new script does not touch the loupes.
Hogies at the ADSA Convention 2026
ADSA National Convention 2026 · Melbourne
The one loupe decision you cannot undo.
It is not the magnification. It is whether the optics are drilled into the lens in front of your eye, or mounted on a hinge ahead of it. One of those you can change your mind about later. The other you cannot.
Ten per cent off every loupe for students, every magnification, every system. The whole range is on our table at the ADSA Convention this Friday and Saturday.
Why that matters before you have felt it
It solves a problem you do not have yet.
That is the argument for a flip-up loupe, and it is the one thing a through the lens pair cannot do. The correction, the fit and the angle all stay adjustable after you have bought them. Nothing about the pair is finished on the day you collect it.
Right now that flexibility probably sounds like it is worth nothing. You have the eyes you have, you sit the way you sit, and a pair fitted to you this year suits you. That is precisely when the decision gets made, and precisely when the consequences are invisible.
So here is the one that arrives for everybody.
You will need a script. It is a question of when, not if.
If you already wear glasses, you know this one. If you do not, you will. Presbyopia, the gradual loss of near focus as the lens of the eye stiffens, is universal. It is not a condition some practitioners develop. It is one that everyone who lives long enough develops, and once it starts it keeps progressing, so the near add needs increasing again every few years.
40 to 45
The age at which presbyopia symptoms typically begin. A 2018 review in Ophthalmology put 1.8 billion people worldwide in that category as of 2015.
Every 2 years
Optometry Australia's recommended eye examination interval for all adults. Medicare subsidises one every three years under 65.
10 to 15 years
What a good pair of loupes is bought as. Your equipment is meant to outlast several versions of your prescription.
Australian data says the same thing. The Blue Mountains Eye Study measured refractive change across five years and found a mean shift of around +0.40 D in people aged 49 to 54, and around +0.30 D at 55 to 64. Distance scripts drift. Near correction climbs. Neither waits for your loupes to wear out first.
Your script will change. On a flip-up pair that costs you a
new pair of glasses. On a through the lens pair it costs you a trip back to
the manufacturer.
That second one is not a small inconvenience. Where the correction is built into the carrier lens, the pair goes back to the factory to be rebuilt, your loupes leave your practice while it happens, and the rebuild can shift working distance, alignment and angulation along with the script. Some through the lens systems take a removable prescription insert instead, which avoids the factory return, so it is worth asking which applies before you buy.
Student pricing
Ten per cent off every loupe.
Not one line, not one magnification. Every loupe system we make, at every magnification, for students in current enrolment. All prices include GST.
MiniScope
Galilean · 2.5x and 3.0x
The lightest way into a Hogies system, on the same magnetic platform as everything else here.
$693 $770
Keeler Galilean
2.5x and Hi-Resolution 3.0x
Keeler optics on the Hogies MediView frame, so the fit and the accessories stay ours.
from $1,485 from $1,650
Prismatic
3.5x, 4.5x and 6.0x
Prism optics for endodontic and restorative detail, with the widest field at each step.
from $2,610 from $2,900
ErgoPath
3.0x through 7.2x
Bends the optical path 45 degrees, so you can work with your head up through a long clinic.
from $2,700 from $3,000Our price is on the website. Ask the
others what theirs is.
What stays adjustable
Four things a finished pair cannot give you back.
Through the lens loupes are measured to you and set there. Your interpupillary distance, your working distance and your declination angle are all built into the carrier lens at the factory. It is a real fit, and for the person it was measured for on the day it was measured, it is a good one. It is also a finished one.
Every Hogies loupe is flip-up, so the measurements are still yours and these four stay open.
01
02
The tilt follows you
Declination angle can be adjusted at any time. From one patient to the next, one day to the next or never at all. It is up to you.
03
Flip up between patients
Lift the optics, you have your unmagnified field and eye contact with the room, and drop them again without taking anything off your head.
04
Build the system slowly
The optics sit on a magnetic platform. A light, a shield or a prescription carrier snaps on when you can afford it, not on day one.
On comfort
Weight is a number on a spec sheet. Comfort is what you notice at four o'clock, and the two are not the same thing.
What decides it is where the weight sits rather than what it adds up to. On most frames it rests on the nose, which is what practitioners are describing when they talk about pressure marks and the small unconscious habit of pushing the frame back up all day. A Hogies frame is built around an engineered support cord that carries almost all of it across your head instead. There is almost no pressure on the nose bridge and no red marks at the end of a long day.
You actually forget you are wearing them.
Choosing
Most students buy a step higher than they need.
Magnification and field of view trade against each other, and so do magnification and depth of focus. Every step up gives you more detail in a smaller window, and a field that is too narrow is harder to work in than one that is slightly too wide, particularly while you are still learning to work inside it.
A rough guide. Lower magnifications hold the widest field and the broadest depth of focus, which matters when you are moving between the whole site and one spot in it. The middle of the range is where a lot of practitioners settle once they have worn loupes for a while. Higher magnifications suit endodontic and fine restorative work, where the field is small anyway.
Those bands overlap, and two people doing the same list will often land a full step apart. If you are buying your first pair, take the lower of the two you are weighing up. Better still, come and look through a few.
Where we are
We are up the road. Not overseas.
Hogies is a Melbourne family business in Burwood, designing eyewear for more than sixty years. That is not a heritage line for the sake of it, it changes two practical things while you are a student.
| Hogies | Through the lens, typically | |
|---|---|---|
| Typical dispatch | Around 3 weeks | 12 to 14 weeks |
| If the fit is wrong | Adjusted here | Returns to the manufacturer |
| Who you talk to | Jason, directly | A dealer or a distributor |
| Price before you enquire | Published | Usually on request |
At the convention
What is on the table.
- ErgoPath, so you can feel what working with your head up is actually like
- Prismatic, Keeler and MiniScope, across the magnification range
- Every one of them able to go over your own glasses or take a magnetic prescription carrier
- The magnetic platform with a light, a shield and a prescription carrier attached
- The MediView frame on its own, which also takes Keeler, Heine, Surgitel and Zeiss optics if you have already been fitted elsewhere
- EyeGuard safety glasses
Bring your glasses if you wear them. Trying loupes over your own prescription is the part you cannot do online, and it settles the whole question in about four seconds.
- Friday 28 August
- Tradeshow, 4:00pm to 7:00pm. Edinburgh and Balmoral Rooms, first floor.
- Saturday 29 August
- From 8:30am, across registration, morning tea and lunch.
- Where
- Stamford Plaza Melbourne, 111 Little Collins Street, Melbourne.
Come and try a pair.
Leave your details and we will look forward to meeting you, then follow up after the show with the student pricing in writing.