Shooting with both eyes open

[Ultimo-Hombre]

Right handed and left eye dominant - I can close right eye with now problem... Lot of guys that I shoot with use the tape on the eye protection for the weak eye....

No they are taping off the cross dominant eye.

If by weak eye you mean non dominant.

We tape the dominant eye to allow for a conventional strong side eye index.

Or some have image confusion and taping has benefits over squinting.

[tigerkf]

While shooting with one of the top production shooters, I asked him about shooting with both eyes open. He confessed to squinting his non dominant eye and told me several other top shooters did the same thing. So, I don't think it is necessary to change anything.

[bobby hated]

Focus on the target

See a sight picture of the front sight but don't look at it

Ignore the rear sight

Get a new coach

[Dirtychemist]

When I was trying to teach myself two ye shooting I did it in steel shoots. I had to shoot slower but I knew both eyes were open. Too a while to find the front sight but I was there to parties it in a tach not just at the range. Seemed to work. No tape. No gadgets. Just gun bullets and eyes.

[Blackstone45]

If I stare at the front sight, I see two rear sights and two targets. This makes transitions rather nauseating.

My best guess is that you are both converging and focusing your eyes on the front sight. That will lead to doubled targets. Instead try to converge on the target but focus on the front sight. There should only be one target.

+1 Let your eye focus go to the target but your brain focus (awareness) is on the sight picture. Sounds hard to do, actually is easy after a while.

If you want to try the tape thing, use some medical tape which is translucent so light gets through. I used to put a narrow strip across my glasses so I could "block" the left eye in the sighting position but go back to normal vision by tilting my head slightly up or down. You want light conductive tape so both eyes get the same amount of light or you can get headaches.

This is exactly the issue I struggled with for a long time, with instructors and coaches hammering in the point that I had to focus on the front sight. In the end, I realised I had to "true focus" on the target so that I only see one target, but concentrate on seeing a perfect sight picture. This has become second nature to me now, and I actually see a pretty clear front sight anyway, despite focusing on the target. I guess I have good depth of field vision?

[Jshuberg]

There are times when a hard front sight focus is essential. Basically the more that sight alignment is more important than sight picture to making the shot, the more your focus should be on the front sight. While it is possible to become good at identifying misalignment of fuzzy sights with a high degree of accuracy, its simply much harder to do this and will take more time.

Optical convergence, optical focus and mental focus are all separate things, and can be controlled independently. When people say to put the point of optical convergence on the target, and to focus on the sights, they are typically *not* talking about mental focus only, they are talking about *optical* focus. You should see one fuzzy target, and two sets of crisp, well defined and partially transparent sights. Eventually your brain will "drop" the unused sight to eliminate visual clutter. Your optical focus should be on your front sight while your point of binocular convergence is on the target. Most of the time these two points are coupled together as we go about our day, but they can be decoupled with very little effort.

Again, placing your optical focus on the target is a valid technique, but it mostly applies to larger targets up close. A head shot at 25 yards or a target placed at 50 is much easier to do with a hard front sight focus than a target focus. This being said, at certain distances the target may disappear altogether with a front sight focus, depending on the quality of your eyes. When this happens you'll need to move your optical focus forward until the target becomes visible again, but you should still focus as closely to the front sight as possible where proper sight alignment is most important.

[Jshuberg]

Closing one eye does have an effect on the other eye, or so I have read. It strains your open eye and can cause some distortion.

It's much more than that. You have a blind spot where the optic nerve attaches to the back of the eye. Its roughly 7.5° high and 5.5° wide, or the size of an egg several inches away from your head, just to the outside of your center of vision. Normally, your brain fills in the blind spot with information from the peripheral vision of your opposite eye. However, when only using one eye, your brain fills it in the best it can with the surrounding colors and patterns. With one eye closed, you are literally not able to see anything in your surprisingly large blind spot. However, your mind creates an optical illusion for you and fills in this blind spot so it's not apparent that it even exists. With only one eye though, mental trickery can only do so much, and anything that exists or happens in your blind spot simply cannot be seen.

While this is a significant concern for practical or defensive shooting for obvious reasons, it can also cause a problem for the competitive shooter. If a small target is located in or moves through your blind spot, your brain will require more time to acquire and react to it's location when it becomes visible again. Closing one eye can have the effect of slowing down your transitions when targets enter and exit your blind spot. This can happen even with targets that are larger than the blind spot if your mind is "zoomed in" on your point of aim, or you are experiencing mental or visual tunnel vision. The only way to prevent this from happening is to let the mind fill in the blind spot with information from the opposite eye. This means keeping both eyes open when there is the possibility of multiple targets.

The problem is significantly worse for people with other types of scotoma other than the natural blind spot due to eye injury or age, etc. The more areas of the eye where vision is diminished, the more the mind relies on information from the other eye to properly create a continuous and complete field of vision.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_spot_%28vision%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filling-in

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotomata

Edited January 16, 2014 by Jshuberg

[Blackstone45]

Jshuberg, could you elaborate a bit more on the difference between focus and convergence? I always thought your eyes had to converge on a target in order to focus on it?

[Jshuberg]

Optical convergence is the point where your binocular vision intersects at a point. You will perceive an object at this point to be one solid object. Anything located closer or further away from your point of visual convergence will be perceived as a partially transparent double image. The further away an object is from your optical convegence, the further apart the double images are from each other. Optical convergence only applies when both eyes are open, with one eye closed you will never perceive a double image at any point regardless of distance.

Optical focus is when the curvature of the lens of the eye is adjusted to collect light directly from a specific point in space. You will perceive an object that is focused on to be crisp and clear. Anything located closer or further away from your point of visual focus will be perceived as fuzzy. The further away an object is from your optical focus, the more blurry it will appear. Optical focus does not require binocular vision, when you close one eye, you can still move the focal point of the open eye up and down your focal continuum. When focused on an object far away, objects up close will be blurry regardless of whether you are using one eye or both eyes.

Normally, our point of optical convergence and point of optical focus are at the same point. They don't have to be though as they use completely separate mechanisms and completely separate muscles to adjust the point they're are zero'd on.

Try this, look at something far away. It will be in focus, and there will be one of them. Now stick your thumb up in the air at arms reach just below the center of your field of view. You will see two partially transparent thumbs, and they will be slightly fuzzy. Slowly pull your focus back to your thumbs, while keeping the two partially transparent thumbs the same distance away from each other. It can take some people a little while to figure this out, but once you do it's easy from that point forward. What you will perceive is a single object back in the distance, but it will be fuzzy. You will also perceive two partially transparent thumbs, but they are in crisp focus.

This is what you want your eyes to do when shooting. You want your point of optical convergence to *always* be on the target - and there should always be one of them. Your optical focus is free to move back and forth from near to far (through the 'focal continuum') depending on the circumstances and the shot. For large/close targets, blurry sights might be good enough, so both your convergence and focus remain on the target. For small/distant targets where you want crisp clear sights, after you have acquired the target and placed your fuzzy front sight on it, you shift your focus back to the front sight - but you *always* leave your point of convergence on the target.

There is a drill that I shoot from time to time that helps to reinforce this. Run a plain white target out to 5 yards of so. Adjust your sights so that POI is directly behind the center of your front sight (not at the top). Shoot a single hole in the target, and then place each subsequent shot through the same hole. Using a .22 works best for this, since you want the smallest hole possible that is significantly smaller than the front sight. How this works is that you need to have your point of convergence on the hole, so that there is one of them, and two sets of partially transparent sights that you put your focus on. Because the front sight blade is partially transparent, you actually look through the front sight blade, and put the hole you are aiming at directly behind the center of it.

The only way possible to shoot the same hole that is obscured by the front sight is to force yourself to use your eyes this way. Unless you can see through your front sight you won't be able to line up the hole perfectly behind it without some other mechanism for aiming, like bullseye rings, etc. This is why we use a large piece of white paper, to keep from cheating and indexing the sights off something other then the hole. Use a rest if necessary, but you want to put every single round through the exact same hole. The act of doing this reinforces what you need to do with your eyes when shooting. Plus its fun to aim through your front sight and hit that very small target.

Anyways, I hope this helps.

Edited January 16, 2014 by Jshuberg

[Idoktr]

Here is a problem I've had since I started shooting Steel Challenge and USPSA about a year ago: I can shoot with one eye open just fine and I do pretty well with just one eye. In the last year I've won a few collegiate titles in SPP and SSC. My scores at local USPSA matches are getting better every month which leads me to believe that I'm doing something right in my overall shooting regimen.

The issue at hand is fairly simple - I know that to really take off in this game I have to start shooting with both eyes open. When I open my left eye (both eyes open), things get a little weird. If I stare at the front sight, I see two rear sights and two targets. This makes transitions rather nauseating. My coach seems to think there is something funky with my eyes. It seems like the left and right eyes are constantly struggling for dominance.

On Saturday I shot some steel at was able to go pretty fast by looking at the target and allowing my sight pictures to be fuzzy. This will only work so well for me going forward. Dryfire and eye exercises may be helping but I want to know if anyone else has these "fighting eyes" or is it something I have to live with? Help?

Here's some other misc. but helpful info about my shooting:

I'm right handed/right eye dominant

I use a green fiber front sight and blacked out rear

I wear contact lenses, but they correct my eyesight to 20/20

How old are you? Reason I ask is that over 40 shooters may need Rx adjustment….ask me how I know

[Blackstone45]

Thank you very much Jshuberg, excellent post answered everything

[tigerkf]

WOW!!! That was way too technical!

[prairiefire]

I, too, am curious as to whether this applies to us older shooters - like in our 60's. Especially with my astigmatism and presbyopia. Great conversation.

[2o2ll]

my guess is neither eye is your dominant eye, ever consider asking an optometrist?

[Jshuberg]

You don't have a dominant eye in the same way you have a dominant hand. The brain will favor one eye over the other, but you can learn to switch between eyes fairly easily. You can even learn to fade back and forth between your eyes as if there was a slider in your head.

Eye dominance in shooting is not a problem that needs to be solved. It's behavior than needs to be understood.

[2o2ll]

You don't have a dominant eye in the same way you have a dominant hand. The brain will favor one eye over the other, but you can learn to switch between eyes fairly easily. You can even learn to fade back and forth between your eyes as if there was a slider in your head.

Eye dominance in shooting is not a problem that needs to be solved. It's behavior than needs to be understood.

You don't have a dominant eye in the same way you have a dominant hand. The brain will favor one eye over the other, but you can learn to switch between eyes fairly easily. You can even learn to fade back and forth between your eyes as if there was a slider in your head.

Eye dominance in shooting is not a problem that needs to be solved. It's behavior than needs to be understood.

wow, very nice wording!

[bountyhunter]

You don't have a dominant eye in the same way you have a dominant hand. The brain will favor one eye over the other, but you can learn to switch between eyes fairly easily. You can even learn to fade back and forth between your eyes as if there was a slider in your head.

Eye dominance in shooting is not a problem that needs to be solved. It's behavior than needs to be understood.

It varies for each individual. Some people (like me) are strongly eye dominant and others not so strong. When I had problems with my right eye a while back, I tried to "cross train" to sighting with my left (non dom) eye and it was impossible. No matter how long I worked on it, I could not do it. My eye would actually start "twitching" focus and I could never get that eye to use as sighting by itself. Eventually, my right eye healed up so I can use it as before. The experience made me eventually transition to dominant (right eye) sighting with both eyes open and dom eye focused on target. But I never was able to sight with left eye only.

[P.E. Kelley]

James Cassanova. GM

Edited March 24, 2014 by P.E. Kelley

[P.E. Kelley]

A well known GM and Champion

[P.E. Kelley]

Bottom line...some do, some don't. The results don't change.

[Jshuberg]

It varies for each individual. Some people (like me) are strongly eye dominant and others not so strong. When I had problems with my right eye a while back, I tried to "cross train" to sighting with my left (non dom) eye and it was impossible. No matter how long I worked on it, I could not do it. My eye would actually start "twitching" focus and I could never get that eye to use as sighting by itself. Eventually, my right eye healed up so I can use it as before. The experience made me eventually transition to dominant (right eye) sighting with both eyes open and dom eye focused on target. But I never was able to sight with left eye only.

I don't think we're talking about the same thing, although we're both using the term "dominant eye".

For some people one eye is simply not capable of being the "primary" eye (perhaps a better term). This is most likely do to a physical condition of some kind, like the muscles that control focus fatiguing easily, the presence of scotoma or the like. This isn't what I've been describing though. What I've been describing the condition where both eyes are physically capable of being the primary eye, but that the mind simply prefers one as the primary eye to handle the problem of paralax in our binocular vision. I've heard the terms strong and weak dominance thrown around - perhaps those are terms designed to specify the reason for the underlying dominance, I'm not sure.

For people with a physical limitation, it's likely incredibly difficult or impossible to train the other eye to become dominant, short of losing the dominant eye. For people without a physical limitation, the ability to switch between eyes can take a little time to work out, but once worked out becomes easy to do.

For anyone wondering how they can "train" themself to be able to switch between eyes, I think the best way to do this is to perform the "impossible colors" experiment, only instead of using blue and yellow, to use something more conventional like red and blue. For those not familiar, an "impossible color" is a color that cannot exist in nature, but is perceived by the human mind when two colors (usually yellow and blue) are viewed, each using a separate eye, with your eyes are crossed so that the two colors "mix" in the mind. Most people get a headache when observing "impossible colors" so it's not recommended to do this for an extended period of time.

For dominance training, place two 8.5x11" pieces of cardboard on a wall next to each other oriented vertically, one red, the other blue. Cut out two identical white plus symbols about 2.5" high and tape them two the center of each of the colored cardboard pieces. Stand back a few feet and cross your eyes until the two plusses overlap each other. What you should perceive is 3 white plusses. The left and right ones will be on their red and blue backgrounds. The background of the center plus could be red, blue, or any shade of purple between them depending on your natural dominance. What you want to do while keeping your eyes crossed, and the plus symbols overlapped in the center is to learn to shift your perception of the center background color between red and blue, and eventually to be able to mix them together and shift across the various shades of purple. For some reason I've found learning to do this when your eyes are crossed helps the mind "let go" of it's normal preference for one dominant eye. If the background of the center plus is always one color, and you can't seem to shift it to the other one, then you are likely physically incapable of changing your dominant eye.

The secret is to learn to "look harder" with one eye more than the other. Using the technique above, those people who are capable of shifting between eyes will figure it out in short order, and it will be a skill that they can call on anytime they want to without any real effort at all. Those who are able to learn this are then able to do all kinds of fun stuff, like shifting between 0X and 4X magnification in their head by shifting between eyes when using an ACOG. The term for this technique in conjunction with an ACOG is the "Bindon Aiming Concept".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_colors

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Impossible_Colors,_Blue_and_Yellow,_for_3dTV.png

Edited March 24, 2014 by Jshuberg

[MotorMouth]

I tried the tape thing. It works when you use it. I put the tape up high on the lens so it obscures your view when you dip your head down to see the sights, but not when you're walking around taping targets.

[Pasley]

The best thing I ever did to improve my shooting (or at least to make it more enjoyable) was to give up on trying to keep both eyes open. That and worrying about vision issues in general. My eyesight (poor as it is) isn't what is holding me back at this point.

[bountyhunter]

It varies for each individual. Some people (like me) are strongly eye dominant and others not so strong. When I had problems with my right eye a while back, I tried to "cross train" to sighting with my left (non dom) eye and it was impossible. No matter how long I worked on it, I could not do it. My eye would actually start "twitching" focus and I could never get that eye to use as sighting by itself. Eventually, my right eye healed up so I can use it as before. The experience made me eventually transition to dominant (right eye) sighting with both eyes open and dom eye focused on target. But I never was able to sight with left eye only.

I don't think we're talking about the same thing, although we're both using the term "dominant eye".

For some people one eye is simply not capable of being the "primary" eye (perhaps a better term). This is most likely do to a physical condition of some kind, like the muscles that control focus fatiguing easily, the presence of scotoma or the like. This isn't what I've been describing though. What I've been describing the condition where both eyes are physically capable of being the primary eye, but that the mind simply prefers one as the primary eye to handle the problem of paralax in our binocular vision. I've heard the terms strong and weak dominance thrown around - perhaps those are terms designed to specify the reason for the underlying dominance, I'm not sure.

That is exactly how I was using the term. Brain dominance, brain preference, a rose by any other name.... my brain refuses to let me use the left eye alone for sighting. That's what most people call eye dominance.

[Jshuberg]

OK sorry, when you mentioned "twitching" I assumed that it was due to a physical limitation of some kind.

While I don't doubt that there are people that have a hard time learning to fade back and forth between eyes, I think it still should be possible to learn this skill. I *don't* think that simply lining up your sights with your "weak" eye is enough for most people. A person needs to learn how to control the slider in their head. The experiment above is how I broke my eye dominance, and can do so on demand ever since.

Fortunately, while doing this is cool and can be helpful in certain circumstances, it's not necessary for pistol shooting. Neither is shooting both eyes open, as some people can and have become outstanding shooters when closing one of their eyes. That being said, I think that be benefits of keeping both eyes open significantly outweigh the effort involved in learning how to do it. We have 2 eyes for a reason, we should learn to use them the way god/evolution intended, especially for defensive training. We may not necessarily perceive that we see significantly better with both eyes open, but we absolutely do.