Mike Z Posted December 5, 2004 Share Posted December 5, 2004 OK guys, any suggestions on dealing with changing eyesight. Up until 3 years ago, my eyes were great. Then suddenly, everything changed. I had a special pair of glasses made for shooting bullseye with a red dot scope. When I tried using these same glasses in a PPC match, I could't even see my sights. No correction is no good either. Does someone make something that is infinitely adjustable for competitive shooting, rather than have to invest in a new prescription every time I want to try a different sport? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strider Posted December 6, 2004 Share Posted December 6, 2004 I guess your problem is short distance & not long ?! You might consider "day use" contacts if any are available to your eyesight needed correction. you can try over correction and change the pistol distance from your eyes in due time (well, when I think of it, it's more of a joke really) or you can try to find another red dot sight. I know many shooters that had the "aged eyes symptom" and moved to shooting red dot instead of irons for overcoming this prob. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kimel Posted December 6, 2004 Share Posted December 6, 2004 The best thing to do is to find an optometrist that is a shooter or is at least willing to work with you. The cheapo places in the malls are probably not going to work with you. If you can find a doc that did optometrist stuff in the military then you have a good chance that they have already done some of this sort of thing. Mine did glasses for the USMC shooting team so he had a number of tricks he used when we spent several hours (over the course of weeks) playing around with things to get me where I needed to be. You can take a handgun to their office (check first and don't forget to unload and show clear early and often) and then they can play with their magic machine until you have a correction that works with your sights. You can also just fake it with some other prop. You may find that you will have a correction in one eye for your sights and another for target distance. This can also cause some people to get massive eye strain headaches and worse. But the only way to find out is to do it. My right eye is corrected more toward my sights and my left eye for distance. I can easily switch dominance in my eyes (which causes its own set of problems) so this works well for me. It can take a lot of mucking about to get a prescription set up that works for you. And then, in a year or two it may not work any longer and you get to do it all over again. There are a couple other threads here that discuss various options. A search should be able to turn them up fairly easily. Good luck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mistral404 Posted December 7, 2004 Share Posted December 7, 2004 Mike Z, I wear contacts all the time. When I go shooting I pop out one lens and replace it with one that has a focal point at the front sight. 6 lens for about $18. Since I have about $700 in my one pair of eye glasses, I am not about to spend that kind of money everytime my eyes get older. If you can go with contacts do it. You may end up with monovision but your brain with adapt to it fast. And $18 is a small investment. I just told them at what distance I wanted to be the focus and it worked great. {Well, I have changed my shooting sytle a little, I am bringing the gun closer to my face which has aided my shot/recoil recovery time greatly and makes shooting on the move a lot more accurate. So I will go back next month and get the prescription changed. $100 for the exam and I get three prescriptions, one for my right eye and two for my left-the folks at Costco looked at me strangely but what the heck.} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Z Posted December 7, 2004 Author Share Posted December 7, 2004 Thanks for the ideas guys. The glasses that I had made for the red dot sight still work fine for that game. But many of the matches that I would still like to shoot are iron sight only and two hand hold which seems to reduce the sight distance. Does anyone have any experience with the Champion shooting glasses/frames. My Optometrist is willing to work with me, and has allowed me to take my gun in to work with. The only frame other than the Baush & Lomb that they were familiar with was the Zeiss, and that was about $1200. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bountyhunter Posted December 8, 2004 Share Posted December 8, 2004 At a certain (OLD) age you will no longer be able to see the front sight when wearing full distance scrip glasses which are what you need for shooting red dot. You will need two different pairs of shooting glasses, one will need a "closer focus" scrip for the dom eye to be able to see the front sight. BTW, a Meritt optical sighter helps us old goats see better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bountyhunter Posted December 8, 2004 Share Posted December 8, 2004 Does anyone have any experience with the Champion shooting glasses/frames. My Optometrist is willing to work with me, and has allowed me to take my gun in to work with. The only frame other than the Baush & Lomb that they were familiar with was the Zeiss, and that was about $1200. Unless they can shoot the gun for you and do reloads, I am not sure what glasses could do that would make them worth $1200. Get some sturdy frames with large lenses and have your lenses made out of polycarbonate (which is what shooting lenses are made from) and you are good to go. Should be able to make it fly for maybe $300 or less. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kimel Posted December 8, 2004 Share Posted December 8, 2004 Rudy Project and others do Rx inserts. I have the Rudy's and other than some initial learning curve about optical centers they have worked out great. I believe Oakley and Wiley X also have/had Rx inserts. There is a FAQ about shooting glasses which will lead to threads that detail some of my, and others, trials and tribulations with Rx insert glasses. Another thing I am about to try are the "static cling" magnification lenses which can be purchased at drug stores. They cling on to your normal glasses and add magnification. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strider Posted December 8, 2004 Share Posted December 8, 2004 when making lens, try to make sure the lens are not curved (like the outer NON-optical-safety lens), It might really distort field of view and create some undesirable effects. I say that since I had some encounters with manufacturers or opticians that wanted to create a slick appearance, but actually made a big headache and little benefit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Malfunction Posted December 8, 2004 Share Posted December 8, 2004 Mike, I have progressive reading glasses with a little distance prescrition, to focus on the front sight all I have to do is tilt my head back a little. I think you can also have that reading prescription placed at the top so that you could dip your head down to focus on the front sight. ( IT'S HELL TO GET OLD ! ) Bill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tptplayer Posted December 9, 2004 Share Posted December 9, 2004 I have gone the "mono-vision" route. My dominant eye lens is set to the distance of my front sight. The other eye has a normal bifocal in it. It took a couple days to get used to this set up but it now works well for everything that I do. It is like have trifocals without the head tilt probolems. I do wear them all of the time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Z Posted December 15, 2004 Author Share Posted December 15, 2004 Thanks for all of the great ideas. I am visiting my optomotrist tomorrow, and taking a couple of my PPC guns with me. I also will be taking infor regarding Champion and Jaggi shooting glasses with me. They seem to be willing to work with me on this. One of the opticians has a close relative who was an Olympic shotgun shooter so they sympathetic to my cause. Kimel, I did ask them about the friction lens that you mentioned. They seemed to thing that those would not be large enough, in other words the size of the lens would be restrictive, as when one is sighting a pistol, you tend to use quite a bit of the surface area of the lens to shoot from different positions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cking Posted December 16, 2004 Share Posted December 16, 2004 I have/had the same problem. Finally came up with a good solution. That won't break the bank. Get the ESS ICE shooting glasses with the RX holder. $55.00. Then get a set of lenses $44.00 Have the dominant eye set for front sight sharp. The other for distance. Total $100.00 and works well for IPSC and Three gun. I can see the fuzz on my front sight again!!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Z Posted January 18, 2005 Author Share Posted January 18, 2005 AN UPDATE. After visiting the optometrist, I found that I actually needed 3 different prescriptons. ONe for my red dot bullseye guns, one for my open sight bullseye guns and a 3rd for my open site PPC guns. The solution I settled on was to buy a set of Jaggi Shooting Glasses from Champion Shooting Supply, with 2 extra lenses. I tried them out last night for the first time in a .22 indoor match. The things worked great. It was nice to be able to see my site. The only problem I had was the lab the optometrist sent the glasses to, set a "Piece of heavy equipment" on the frames and damaged a piece. Champions was great and got a new piece out to me the next day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcoliver Posted January 19, 2005 Share Posted January 19, 2005 Mono-vision. I did an experiment months back. Being near-sighted, I popped off the right lense so I can have a clear front sight and my left eye can see the targets clearly. I remember feeling really sick and didn't push through with the experiment. Fast forward several days ago. I did the same experiment but this time on the RX inserts on my Rudy's. Now I only need a few minutes with it on and the discomfort disappears. Shot a match with it on recently and noticed having conciously seeing a clearer front sight. I may shoot a larger match again this weekend wearing it so I can evaluate it's benefits further. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eye Cutter Posted January 19, 2005 Share Posted January 19, 2005 I remember feeling really sick and didn't push through with the experiment. Yes, mono-vision can be beneficial, but it is not for everybody. It is termed anisometropia, a condition in which the refractive power of one eye differs from that of the other. Most people can tolerate a diopter difference of 2 diopters in lens power between the two eyes. More than that, wearing the eye glasses will produce queasiness and inability to wear the prescriptions for long periods of time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Z Posted January 21, 2005 Author Share Posted January 21, 2005 I've never had a problem switching back and forth between shooting with one eye or both eyes open. For tactical shooting, I've always been able to shoot with both eyes open, but for fine target shooting, I like to close one eye. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcoliver Posted January 22, 2005 Share Posted January 22, 2005 Yes, mono-vision can be beneficial, but it is not for everybody. It is termed anisometropia, a condition in which the refractive power of one eye differs from that of the other. Most people can tolerate a diopter difference of 2 diopters in lens power between the two eyes. More than that, wearing the eye glasses will produce queasiness and inability to wear the prescriptions for long periods of time. Hey, doc,thanks for the explanation. I noticed one"quirk" with this setup btw. Although the eyes have been "corrected" to differing distances of focus, I'm still exerting the effort to "draw back my focus" on the front sight. It seems I still need to conciously put my attention to the FS otherwise I miss the steel or incorrectly call a shot. I've thought about it as surprising, since the eyes have already been corrected there should be no more shifting of focus. Maybe this time it has to do more with the already-programmed activity of shiting eye attention rather than actually seeing things more clearly? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aXXman Posted January 22, 2005 Share Posted January 22, 2005 I know I need to concentrate to keep my focus from wandering. If I look at the target, I focus on it more. It's probably more of a mental focus wandering that my eyes follow. -shawn Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
antediluvianist Posted February 6, 2005 Share Posted February 6, 2005 Yes, I'm 59 and I validate your problem. My solutions: 1) point-shooting - nuts to the sight picture. We're talking fairly short-range self-defense here, not competition. and 2) a shotgun - probably better for home defense anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tightloop Posted February 7, 2005 Share Posted February 7, 2005 do what Kimel says...find a doc who is a shooter who knows what you need... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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