The best lens color for an indoor range: clear, then vermillion, then yellow — and nothing darker

What indoor light is

Fluorescent tubes or LED panels, spaced along the ceiling, lighting a lane that runs twenty-five yards to a backstop. The light is even and it is dim compared with a cloudy day outside — your pupils are open. The target is high contrast already: a black bull or a gray silhouette on white. There is no glare to cut and no orange to lift. The job of the lens is to get out of the way, and if it does anything at all, to make black blacker.

Clear: the default

A clear polycarbonate lens transmits nearly all visible light, which is the whole argument. Every kit ships one, every maker calls it the indoor lens (Howard Leight: "Clear (indoor/outdoor)"), and the Crossbow 2LS puts one in the box beside the smoke lens for exactly this reason. If you buy one lens for an indoor range, it is clear.

Vermillion: the named indoor tint

Vermillion is a pink-red lens that passes red and orange and cuts green. Under fluorescent light — which is heavy in green — it warms the scene and deepens the black of a bull against white. Howard Leight is the maker that says so on the page: the Genesis kit's vermillion lens is for "fluorescent/halogen indoor ranges". It is also the clay tint, which makes the Genesis the kit for a shooter who splits time between an indoor bay and a trap field. The clay side is on best lens color for sporting clays.

Yellow: for a dim bay

On an older range with tired tubes, yellow does what it does outdoors on a gray day: blocks the blue, sharpens the edges, makes the bay feel brighter. It costs a little total light and casts everything yellow, so it is the third choice rather than the first. Why yellow works is on yellow vs clear.

What to leave in the truck

• Smoke and gray. They cut light evenly; indoors that is light you needed.
• Mirrors. A mirror coat is a smoke lens with a reflective layer; same problem.
• Polarized. No glare to cut, and a polarizer can blank the LCD on a range display or a chronograph. See should shooting glasses be polarized.
• Amber, mostly. Amber is a deeper yellow; on a dim bay it takes more light than it gives back.

Picks

The one tint that beats clear on a fluorescent-lit indoor range is vermillion, and Honeywell names it for exactly that job. What the filter is doing, and where it fails, is on vermillion and rose lenses.