I understand what your saying. If we were hobby welders doing this on weekends or every other weekend working on our hot rod in my opinion we'd be alright. They do change in what, 1/25,000 of a second? You would not think that would be a problem but day in and day out I think that over time it will end up doing some sort of damage.

Is there a way to to get it to change faster? Not sure what hood manufacturers have up their sleeves. But the lens would have to anticipate your arc strike. The arc strike is the key to the switch. If your going to punch my arm, you say "go" initiating the punch(like touching the rod to the material) it will take me a few seconds to react to block the punch or move. Same thing with the hood. Light travels at 186,000 miles per second, I believe if your a foot away from your arc strike they said it will take about 8 milliseconds for light to travel a foot. Don't know how fast these hoods are in milliseconds but they would have to change in 7 milliseconds or less, which would be faster than the speed of light. Our hoods need some sort of precognition so it can start changing before we strike the arc, just barely so we can see what were doing like now but before the light started to travel.

Tommy I have been dealing with the curse of bifocals for about 5 years and yes they suck. I have the progressive and can't seem to get them at the right distance, especially when I am looking at an angle to the side, which is where most of us weld. I have been experimenting with cheaters at differant strengths and right now I'm at a 1.5X which really helps my side vision. Don't despair, you will get used to them. You won't like them but they're a fact of life for us soon to be old goats.

I have found that 1.25 cheater and 1.00 eye glasses work for me, that is this year, next month maybe a diff storie LOL
Its h--- to get old

browning

I always use a big glass hood for auto dark lenses...so could not tell you the best single for your pancake.  I use the old school auto lens in my stick hood, a flip up.  Not many major brands make regular size single auto darks anymore.  Arc one has the widest selection of them far as I know, there full size lenses are very light so I expect the singles to be the same.  In the ones I have owned I got rid of the cheap ones quickly as they shaded unevenly (like Shad was talking about) and it bugged me a lot.  I had to spend some bucks on the higher end models before I found some that were as consistent as a good glass lens.

http://www.arc1weldsafe.com/auto-darkening-filters.html

"I've never worn glasses, so have not had UV protection before."  Not picking on you Tyrone, not trying to be a smart alack either,  just wanted to clarify something.  Every time you use a welding lens you have UV protection.  The light you actually can see from a welding arc is not what burns your eyes, it is the high intensity invisible Ultra-Violet light that smokes them and causes real damage.  Intense bright light in the visible spectrum causes irritation and temporary overloading of the light receptors in your eyeball, it can cause damage but because you CAN see it people have a natural tendency to look away.  Otherwise strobe lights and such would have been outlawed back in the days of disco when all the John Travolta wannabes started walking into light poles and traffic.  A filter shade number is just to make it more comfortable to look at the arc, just like sunglasses make it more comfortable to see on a sunny day.  All welding lenses filter UV radiation that is actually what is protecting your eyes.  A shade 9 filters UV just as much as a shade 13, you just don't realize it because you cannot see the UV.