Vision Problems

I just had my longest Lucid Dream yet last night, it was probably in the area of 10-15 minutes. My problem is with the vividness, and the clarity of the dream. There were times when it was pretty clear, but throughout the dream it kept fading and getting kind of murky, and at one point I completely lost all vision for about 1-2 minutes. I tried focusing on my hands, and also shouting "Clarity Now!" but neither of these really helped. It's not that I lost lucidity, but it just seemed like the "dimmer switch" of my mind was turned on low, which is in stark contrast with stories I hear about people who have lucid dreams that are hundreds of times more vivid and real than their normal waking reality.

Any comments, recommendations, or suggestions are appreciated.

It sounds as though you were regaining conciousness, when you are completely asleep and the chemicals in your brain are fully active and your subconcious is running wild- turning thoughts and tiny particles of memory into scenes and scenarios and you begin to think too much with your concious mind then your sublime cannot work as well, much like somebody trying to tell a story when you shout another over the top of theirs.
Did you find yourself trying to force the image of your lucid dream back into your head?
There are loads of threads and tutorials on Dreamviews which explain various different methods of maintaining lucidity both whilst you are dreaming and before you go to sleep (such as what you eat or auto-suggestion techniques)

http://www.dreamviews.com/stayinglucid.php
-From the main page.

Search around the forums and experiment with ideas if this becomes more of a problem for you, normally what will work swimmingly for one person may not work quite so well for yourself.

Probably one of the most versatile methods which has been very successful for me is to plainly just be patient. You might begin to have visuals and heavily realistic scenes in your head straight away which may encourage you to be eager to start your lucid dream, you should try to relax and just nuture your mind in this visionary state as it's very fragile :D Slowly let the visuals build up until you can calmly begin to twist and mould yourself a fabricated reality, this also goes for if you begin to loose conciousness mid-dream which can be a pain in the ass as it can be downward spiral to awakening, but just relax try to concentrate on the dream your were having and don't panic! As you had explained that you were concentrating on your hands and saying "Clarity now!", this may easily become your downfall as it encourages your concious mind to fire up and begin to work.

Hope this helps :)
Good luck dreamer

Whenever I begin to lose clarity of a dream, I close my eyes and spin, it always helps me alot :)

thanks