Nimitz Posted August 13, 2014 Share Posted August 13, 2014 I have been wearing contacts for 30 years and my current prescription is a progressive lens which affords me both 20/20 near & far vision in my dominant eye. However, I have noticed lately that some times I have great difficulty bringing the front sight into razor sharp focus and instead the rear sight is razor sharp instead no matter how hard I try ... other times I can bring the front sight into sharp focus without effort ... Any eye doctors out there what to chime in ...? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zoomy Posted August 14, 2014 Share Posted August 14, 2014 (edited) I'm not an eye doc. But at 54 years old and have been wearing glasses for 22 years, my old eyes have been giving me the same problems. For me it seems to be stress that influences how my corrected vision focuses on the front and rear sight. My sister inlaw is an optometrist and told me to expect more of the same as I get older. I have been considering LASIK to correct my nearsightedness but there Is no guarantee that the front sight will be in sharp focus. Edited August 14, 2014 by Zoomy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nimitz Posted August 15, 2014 Author Share Posted August 15, 2014 hmmmm ..... I was assuming it was an 'older eyes' thing. I'd be careful with Lasik as I've been told it's really only effective on younger eyes. With older eyes the correction doesn't last all that long relatively speaking ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zoomy Posted August 15, 2014 Share Posted August 15, 2014 hmmmm ..... I was assuming it was an 'older eyes' thing. I'd be careful with Lasik as I've been told it's really only effective on younger eyes. With older eyes the correction doesn't last all that long relatively speaking ... Thanks, I was wondering if LASIK and age matter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jadeslade Posted August 15, 2014 Share Posted August 15, 2014 Lasik lasts forever, your eye changes under it so you need glasses again. Sounds like you have a cataract brewing. Shooters notice things about 10 years earlier than general population, because it's what we do. I would go get a complete eye exam at your eye doctor-an ophthalmologist or an ophthalmologist/optometrist combined practice-surface topography,retinal scan, acuity, and physical exam and then discuss it with your ophthalmologist, letting him know about your shooting and issues.. Easily remedied. I am not an eye doctor, I just know stuff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bountyhunter Posted August 15, 2014 Share Posted August 15, 2014 (edited) I have been wearing contacts for 30 years and my current prescription is a progressive lens which affords me both 20/20 near & far vision in my dominant eye. However, I have noticed lately that some times I have great difficulty bringing the front sight into razor sharp focus and instead the rear sight is razor sharp instead no matter how hard I try ... other times I can bring the front sight into sharp focus without effort ... Any eye doctors out there what to chime in ...? I wonder if it is because you can't accurately position the lense with respect to the cornea? I wear progressive glasses and I can move the lense up and down to get a perfect focus on any distance, but a contact lense is where it is based on your eye position and how your eyelids hold onto the lense. I don't think it's as precise. Edited August 15, 2014 by bountyhunter Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nimitz Posted August 15, 2014 Author Share Posted August 15, 2014 I wondered the same thing and almost got a pair of glasses for shooting but stopped short because I was worried about having to shift my head all the time to go between seeing near & far ... Do any of you out there have bi focal shooting glasses? Is that a problem? Not so sure about the 20/20 near lens for the dominate eye & a 20/20 distance lens for the non dominate eye type glasses either .... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pjb45 Posted August 19, 2014 Share Posted August 19, 2014 A couple of issues: I have mono-vision. One contact is for close (unfortunately the non-dominate eye) and the other is for far vision. This works fine for me. I just close my dominate eye. I have also switched the contacts with the dominate eye for close and the non-dominate eye for distance. I did this later for quite a number of months. There was essentially no difference in my classifiers scores. Second, I was talking with a FBI agent about target v. front sight focus. As you may know, the FBI has spent a lot of time and money studying shooting and accuracy. I believe the results of the FBI was that it did not make that much difference. I may have misunderstood the conclusions but it does make for an interesting discussion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted August 19, 2014 Share Posted August 19, 2014 How long has it been since you played around with different Fiber colors? Try some different fiber colors to see if that helps bring your attention/focus to the front sight easier. If that is the case, then you probably need to change up your front/rear sight configuration to make the front sight bigger so its easier to see and the rear notch wider and deeper so its harder to get distracted by the rear blade. Everyone likes a different front/rear sight setup so its hard to make a specific recommendation for a change. What is your current sight setup, starting with the width of the front sight verses the width of the rear notch? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cautery Posted August 19, 2014 Share Posted August 19, 2014 Second, I was talking with a FBI agent about target v. front sight focus. As you may know, the FBI has spent a lot of time and money studying shooting and accuracy. I believe the results of the FBI was that it did not make that much difference. I may have misunderstood the conclusions but it does make for an interesting discussion. I've not seen this study, or its conclusions. But if theyy are asserting that it makes little difference between target vs. front sight focus, I think there'd be a LOT of top shooters who might tend to disagree with them. Of course, you have to take into account the FBI's studied conditions. What was their "scoring area" and what was their "scoring distance". The front sight becomes more and more important with either/both reduction in the desired scoring area deviation and with increasing distance to scoring area. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nimitz Posted August 19, 2014 Author Share Posted August 19, 2014 Currently I have the Dawson FO front that is .095W & 195T. Dot is green Rear is a CZ Custom competition sight with serrations and on my calipers measures .115 in width Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cautery Posted August 19, 2014 Share Posted August 19, 2014 Nimitz, sorry.... In response to original question, I am not an eye doctor, not have I worn contacts, but will make a supposition.I have "old man eyes" like the rest of the guy my age... When I finally broke down and got a pair of "real" glasses to replace my "readers", I chose progressive lenses... I decided to try them shooting. I quickly decided that they would not be the solution. I found that the area of the lense available that matched the focus distance for my front sight was very narrow, and found myslef fighting to get the eye/head tilt "right"Additionally, my eyes continued to fight for dominance (right handed, left-eye dominant), and also fought to focus other than on the sight...Is it possible that your progressive contacts have such a narrow transisition area, combined with changing eye abilities to focus close, that either 1) the CLOSE ring takes over which maxes out near the rear sight, and/or 2) variations in stance/head/eye tilt/position cause you to NOT be able to use the very narrow ring that includes the front sight distance.MY solution, since I still ahve 20/20 distant vision, was to use an insert on my Rudys and put aplano lense in th eleft lense, and a 1.25 diopter in the right (optimized specifically for my front sight distance). This allows me to 1) see the front sight clearly, and 2) as a bonus overcomes the cross-dominance problem since the left eye can't focus on the front sight clearly at all.... and the left eye can take over for down range stuff.Takes some getting used to but seems to be working... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nimitz Posted August 19, 2014 Author Share Posted August 19, 2014 (edited) I suspect that is what is going on with my contacts ... My concern with the one eye close & one eye far is that because of 3 eye surgeries in my non dominant eye I only have about 20/25 corrected vision in it so if I make a lens for my dominate eye that is 20/20 close only I won't be able to get 20/20 distant from either eye. Not exactly sure how that would work. During my up coming annual exam I'll get my eye doctor to setup that to see if I could see with it and maybe make up a pair of cheap glasses to try out ... I hate to think I just need to move to open ......... Edited August 19, 2014 by Nimitz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GrumpyOne Posted August 19, 2014 Share Posted August 19, 2014 Nimitz, pm Youngeyes...he'll set you straight on eye doc stuff...he IS an eye doc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cautery Posted August 19, 2014 Share Posted August 19, 2014 I hate to think I just need to move to open ......... LOL! I understand... I think I'd enjoy shooting Open, but I'd prefer it be a choice. GrumpyOne may have a point... talking to an eye doc that shoots migght be of benefit. It took extensive education of my doctor before he understood what I wanted and why I needed what I wanted... Fortunately, he was prior Air Force, so not freaked out by the idea of me bringing my pistol (discreetly) to the exam room. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted August 19, 2014 Share Posted August 19, 2014 Currently I have the Dawson FO front that is .095W & 195T. Dot is green Rear is a CZ Custom competition sight with serrations and on my calipers measures .115 in width Everyone's eyes process the brightness of colors differently so its hard to give an exact color change recommendation, but try switching the Fiber to a brighter color. From Green the next brightest may be Red or Orange. If changing the brightness of the FO rod helps you pick up and focus on the front sight easier then you may have a situation where you need to use a wider and deeper rear notch. I know for myself, if the rear notch is too narrow or shallow it is very distracting and I find my focus being pulled back to the rear blade fairly easy. In my own testing I have found that an optimal width different between the front and rear sights to be around .035 - .045. Your .095 wide front sight should be wide enough to pull your attention to it. If you opened up the rear notch width to .135 then made it deep enough so you could see the whole front sight from top to bottom, I think you would be surprised at how much easier it is to stay focused on the front sight and not get distracted by the rear notch. For a 5inch Limited gun my preferred sight setup is a .100 wide by .180 tall front sight with an Orange FO rod. Then a rear notch that is .145 wide by .145 deep. This setup allows me to maintain a front sight focus fairly easily and the Orange FO allows me to maintain that front sight focus in less than optimal lighting conditions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daves_not_here Posted August 19, 2014 Share Posted August 19, 2014 (edited) Is it also slower to get near things into focus? It might be "hardening of the lens". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presbyopia Exercises to add to your dry-fire routine. There are others. http://www.i-see.org/gottlieb/presbyopia_chart.pdf DNH Edited August 19, 2014 by daves_not_here Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cautery Posted August 19, 2014 Share Posted August 19, 2014 Is it also slower to get near things into focus? It might be "hardening of the lens". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presbyopia Exercises to add to your dry-fire routine. There are others. http://www.i-see.org/gottlieb/presbyopia_chart.pdf DNH That's a cool exercise deal for reducing presbyopia... I'm gonna setup a schedule to do it for a month to see if I cana get some improvement.... And, I serious dig your usernmae... Daves not here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nimitz Posted August 19, 2014 Author Share Posted August 19, 2014 thx all. I'll try the red FO first and maybe orange if I can find that too. I do like the idea of widening & deepening my rear sight, that makes a lot of sense. I'll need to look into a smith who can do this for me ... those exercises look good as well, certainly can't hurt ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nimitz Posted August 20, 2014 Author Share Posted August 20, 2014 Cha-lee: how did you end up with the .145 width? Trial and error until you were happy? Also, where did you find orange FO rods? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted August 20, 2014 Share Posted August 20, 2014 Cha-lee: how did you end up with the .145 width? Trial and error until you were happy? Also, where did you find orange FO rods? For the width, it was a lot of trial and error. Don't even get me started on how much $$ I have spent on hacking up rear sights to try out different width and depths. I get my Fiber Optic rod from the below website. Most competition front sights use a 1mm diameter FO rod (.040"). This website sells a color pack that contains a decent length strip of each color. Get the color pack to try out the different colors and then you can order more of the primary color(s) you like the most. But usually the color pack has enough FO rod in it of each type to last a long time. http://www.fiberopticproducts.com/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve RA Posted August 20, 2014 Share Posted August 20, 2014 Get checked for cataracts, they - besides making things fuzzy - will have an effect on your distance and also close vision. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rdinga Posted August 20, 2014 Share Posted August 20, 2014 I am 53 and had lasik surgery about 7 years ago. Had been nearsighted since college and then moved into bifocals. After Lasik I can see 20/20 at a distance. Still need reading glasses. When I shoot at the indoor range I wear reading glasses to see the front sight well. shooting out doors in bright light is less of the problem. I have tried white beads, gold beads, and other types of front sights. Just for today I still do best with the black on black Heine sights. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nimitz Posted August 20, 2014 Author Share Posted August 20, 2014 because of my 2 retinal tear surgeries & 1 cataract surgery I see eye doctors fairly often. there is currently no issue WRT to my vision in either eye from their perspective ...my vision is very clear, it's just a fast focus thing ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bountyhunter Posted August 20, 2014 Share Posted August 20, 2014 (edited) Second, I was talking with a FBI agent about target v. front sight focus. As you may know, the FBI has spent a lot of time and money studying shooting and accuracy. I believe the results of the FBI was that it did not make that much difference. I may have misunderstood the conclusions but it does make for an interesting discussion.+1 I've seen a lot of pictures of LE's drawing down with their handguns and I have yet to see one with his eye squinted.... this maybe why: http://loadoutroom.com/10813/front-sight-focus-shooting-drill/ Front Sight Focus. Is it what it seems? During a combative pistol call, I noticed that a few of the students kept saying to themselves quietly, “front sight, front sight, front sight…” I understood what they were trying to instill into their minds, but I had to keep reminding them that at a distance of 5-10 feet, what does the front sight really mean, especially when your life may be on the line? I think some may get too caught up with becoming the “precision sniper pistol shooter,” making sure that all the rounds are touching in the 10-ring. Taking a step back and looking at why most of us law-abiding citizens carry a pistol, we can start to put things into perspective and reevaluate our training regimen. Most of us carry a pistol for personal protection and the protection of others in everyday living. We never know when the time may come that we have to use it. It may be leaving the store, walking to your car, at the ATM machine, at the gas station, etc., whatever the case may be, odds are you won’t be expecting it. The Police Marksman Association conducted a study of 180 cases where the LEOs won the confrontation. The results: average distance was 4-12 feet average number of rounds fired: 3.5. This was dependent on caliber; .357 Mag the average was 2.3 rounds and 9 mm it was 5.5 rounds, and other calibers fell in between these two figures the officers hit [their assailants] 61.5% of time (compared to FBI, where the figure is only 14% hit percentage) Being that most of my courses revolve around combat shooting, I typically train to fight at a practical distance. To get the students time up to par, and get them into a combat mindset where time is key, we conducted a simple drill that anyone at any range can conduct. There is nothing wrong with saying “front sight” repeatedly for a beginner shooter, or someone who is competing, or making a precise shot at distance, don’t get me wrong, but this is about training to fight. I can guarantee with almost 100% certainty that, if you have to use your weapon as a defensive tool, you won’t remember ever seeing your sights because it’s an almost instinctive shoot. Edited August 20, 2014 by bountyhunter Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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