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How sharp a front sight focus?


RickT

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I have had cataract surgery on my dominant (right) eye.  For Single Stack I use monovision prescriptions, distance for left eye, front sight for right eye.  The sights are crystal clear.  I don't have binocular vision so while my left eye provides situational awareness I really don't track to the next target (steel challenge) with my left eye and I obviously don't have the ability in real time to transition from target to sight focus.  The sharp sight focus really decreases target contrast under certain lighting conditions and I'm wondering if anyone in a similar situation has compromised sight crispness to provide a bit more contrast at target distance.  My current shooting prescription is distance plus 1.5 diopter which is dead on the front sight.

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I think you need to experiment with your eye condition to know what you can get away with. And Even w/ healthy eyes, every person is diifferent. What you might read here mostly is the typical by the book focus w/c is a good place to start with but dont stop there. 

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17 hours ago, NETim said:

I gave up and went to CO.   

 

+1,000,000

 

I did that a year ago and have never regretted it.  Some friends asked me to go to this year's Mitten Match low cap championship so I took the dot off my P-10F and went.  It was fun but also frustrating knowing that I was screwing up shots that I would easily nail with a dot.

 

The dot went right back on the day I got home and I'm never shooting any iron sight division again.

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For USPSA distances, except for some "standards" stages with very long shots, fuzzy sight will not be (much of) a detriment. An acceptable sight picture is usually way less precise than a bit of fuzziness you get from less-than-perfect focus. 

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  • 1 month later...

I’ve never understood front sight focus for self defense oriented shooting. 
Our intent is not to direct a bullet to the front sight but to a remote target. 
My front sight is never clear but it is clear to me what my sight picture is telling me. 
When you use front sight focus your rear sight is not in focus therefore you are interpreting contrasts in the two sights, the same skill target focus requires. 
It’s all about being confident in what you see no matter how you see it. 

Edited by Tawadc95
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Once I compared my accuracy in bullseye shooting when target focused vs. front sight focused. I did not see much of a difference in 25 meter 5 shot groups. Perhaps front sight focus is a bit more accurate, but I think the difference would be negligible for action shooting. I think you can be 100% target focussed, with fuzzy front and rear sights, and still get your hits, provided that you are aware what is happening to the sights as you pull the trigger.

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I've shot with red dots for 40 years and now I'm shooting irons for the fun of it.  I just started with iron sights for Steel Challenge and it's getting easier to focus on the front sight after lots of practice and dry fire routines.  As with anything it takes about 5000 attempts to ingrain the idea until it becomes normal for you to do.  Keep practicing and watching that front sight and it will come.

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  • 1 month later...

I was primarily a USPSA shooter in Carry Optics division up until about 8 months ago when I started shooting Steel Challenge RFRO and RFPO using Red Dots.  I added Steel Challenge shooting due to the centerfire ammo crisis and fortunately had accumulated lots of .22LR ammo before that went too crazy.  After I started using Red Dots for competition, I won't go back to the frustration of iron sights due to my own eye issues.

My own transition from iron sight shooting started about 5 years ago when my eyesight took another change.  I have been wearing glasses for at least 50 years, but at that point I could no longer focus on three sight planes easily anymore.  And so I started searching for a solution to that dilemma so I could keep shooting competitions.

I enjoy doing research to look at how others have solved each of the pieces that you have to put together to be good at action shooting.  More and more top shooters these days are going to target focus for action shooting.  Their theories for doing this mostly agree and make good sense.   For action shooting, speed is of primary importance and you only need an "acceptable" sight picture, not a "perfect" sight picture.  So, based on that theory many top shooters have found by trial and error that you can produce acceptable accuracy with a target focus and allow your front sight and rear sight to be out of focus.  Each shooter needs to adapt this idea to their own situation, but don't be afraid to try it!  The trick to be good with Red Dots is to shoot with a target focus, don't look at the dot!  For me, I love my Red Dots now!!!

 

Edited by ShredderTactical
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I now shoot irons with the same fixed distance focus prescription as I use for my PCC.  As long as I have the right percentage of white space in the rear sight notch I don't find my accuracy affected one bit. 

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  • 2 months later...
On 5/2/2021 at 9:29 AM, SGT_Schultz said:

 

+1,000,000

 

I did that a year ago and have never regretted it.  Some friends asked me to go to this year's Mitten Match low cap championship so I took the dot off my P-10F and went.  It was fun but also frustrating knowing that I was screwing up shots that I would easily nail with a dot.

 

The dot went right back on the day I got home and I'm never shooting any iron sight division again.

I plan on shooting that next year, did you enjoy it?

 

the two things i learned from dabbling in CO and then going back to irons was 

1) it was much easier to have a harder target focus instead of the half target/ half FS picture that i had.

2) my indexing needed to be cleaner. a fiber optic front sight might look good vertically, but horizontally, it may be a smidge left or right. A lot easier to pick up on those flaws with a red dot

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23 hours ago, SGT_Schultz said:

 

I did enjoy it but I'm on the fence because it's all irons again, and not all divisions like I had heard it might become.

 

Quite honestly I'm completely over iron sights.

From what I read on PS, it says itll be only be P, SS, L10, and Revo.

 

I 100% understand that. If you are already on the fence about iron sighted guns, why spend money on a level 2 match and subject yourself to 40*F shooting weather lol

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2 hours ago, Hvansky said:

From what I read on PS, it says itll be only be P, SS, L10, and Revo.

 

I 100% understand that. If you are already on the fence about iron sighted guns, why spend money on a level 2 match and subject yourself to 40*F shooting weather lol

To be fair, the weather last year was fabulous.  But it's Michigan in the spring so you just never know.

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