leam Posted May 23 Share Posted May 23 I need corrective lenses to see far out, but the lenses I have blur the front sight. Should I wear non-corrective shooting glasses? Is there another option? One idea might be a red dot. However, I've never used one, and am between jobs right now so a new blaster isn't in the cards. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MHicks Posted May 23 Share Posted May 23 You just have to try and see what works. I had glasses with the dominant eye set for front sight focus, distance in other eye. Worked great with irons. But I need my distance vision with the optic. I'm close to needing cataract surgery and my vision changed more dramatically this year. Uncorrected shooting glasses are working well with the optic right now. Not able to see the irons well though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dapribek Posted May 23 Share Posted May 23 I had the same problem years ago and a buddy gave me the solution. I had bifocals made (so I could keep score), and my right top portion of the lens was set for computer distance and the left top lens for far distance. This allowed me to see the front sight clearly with a slightly blurred target which ended up working perfectly. I highly recommend this set up! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shred Posted May 23 Share Posted May 23 "Monovision" with front-sight dominant eye and distance non-dominant eye lenses is the typical solution for competition iron sight shooters, but not everyone can get their brains to combine the images successfully. Should be lots of threads about it here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnZ Posted May 23 Share Posted May 23 Welcome to the "getting older sucks club"!! I have trained myself to "find" distant targets looking through my corrective lenses, then looking over them to see the front sight clearly, sounds stupid, but it works for me Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chills1994 Posted May 23 Share Posted May 23 (edited) 20 hours ago, leam said: I need corrective lenses to see far out, but the lenses I have blur the front sight. Should I wear non-corrective shooting glasses? Is there another option? One idea might be a red dot. However, I've never used one, and am between jobs right now so a new blaster isn't in the cards. When is the big Nationals or World skeet shoot in Texas ? Yes, I said skeet. There should be plenty of vendors there including an optometrist or two who can give you an exam, “grind” your own lenses, and then shade or tint the lenses to your liking. Shred is correct. Make the lens for your dominant eye basically “window pane”….with no correction. Then your non-dominant eye gets the distance prescription lens. As far as your brain combining the two images, that is called “retinal rivalry”. EDIT: or rather when your brain can’t combine both images…then it is called “retinal rivalry” or “binocular rivalry”. It has been a “human factors engineering” thing since Cobra and Apache helo pilots started wearing helmets with “monocles” . In my particular case, my eye doc was set up at trapshooting’s Grand in Sparta, IL. He met with me a second time on the pistol berms with a pair of these: And then did the whole “Which is better….one…or two?” thing while I was pointing my handgun at a target or at the back berm. Then he had the tinted filters with him which let me pick the best color to get the brown cardboard targets to stand out from the brown earthen berms. Edited May 23 by Chills1994 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IVC Posted May 23 Share Posted May 23 You have to see the front sight in focus for any hard shot. For easy shots it doesn't matter. Combine the two and you have to correct your vision for the front sight, or you'll have to give up hard(er) shots. Even if your vision was perfect, you couldn't focus at both the front sight and the target at the same time. Shooting at a blurry target is a feature, not a bug, of irons sights. Per-eye prescriptions are tricky. You could use them even with 20/20 vision to force split-screen vision of two different focal planes. Sort of complicated and cumbersome solution for something that red dot solves simply and elegantly. Red dot is great because there is only one focal plane, that of the target. You correct your vision for the distance and you are done. Not what you wanted to hear, but still the simplest solution. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prange Posted May 24 Share Posted May 24 If you could find an Eye Doctor that would let you bring your guns to the office, it helps a ton. And glasses that have a replaceable RX insert come in real handy if your RX changes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CraigS Posted May 24 Share Posted May 24 I am left eye dominant so I shoot iron sight pistols w/ my right eye closed. I had glasses made where the entire left lens is focused at front sight distance. Works great w/ sight perfect and target slightly blurry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lgh Posted May 24 Share Posted May 24 If you are not locked into irons, get a dot. I have two sets of glasses. One is for irons so the front sight is featured vs the target and the other glasses are for a dot which is a single focal plane for the dot and the target but not good for front sight focus. Pick your poison. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ALL_comped_EVERYTHING Posted May 24 Share Posted May 24 Have you considered LASIK eye surgery? I had bad eye vision and a horrible eye astigmatism. Dots looked like comets or swooshes. After the LASIK eye procedure my eyes are better than 20/20 and astigmatism is almost completely gone. Best 4k I’ve spent and wished I did it years earlier Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leam Posted May 25 Author Share Posted May 25 Wow! Lots of great suggestions! I think a dot would be the way to go when I can afford one, but it sounds like going with plain glasses for the sharp front sight picture is the way to go. I haven't looked at Lasik, but once I'm back on a job that might be a good thing. I avoided it for a long time because I was a scuba diver, and wasn't sure what the effect at depth would be. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chills1994 Posted May 25 Share Posted May 25 39 minutes ago, leam said: Wow! Lots of great suggestions! I think a dot would be the way to go when I can afford one, but it sounds like going with plain glasses for the sharp front sight picture is the way to go. I haven't looked at Lasik, but once I'm back on a job that might be a good thing. I avoided it for a long time because I was a scuba diver, and wasn't sure what the effect at depth would be. Around 2004, the Air Force approved LASIK for people wanting to go to Undergraduate Pilot Training. I would imagine there are some negative G’s and positive G’s experienced during UPT. Not to mention that very incredibly small chance of a rapid decompression of a cockpit/cabin. What used to be strictly verboten in the Air Force in the 1980’s and 1990’s was radial keratotomy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leam Posted May 28 Author Share Posted May 28 On 5/24/2024 at 7:54 PM, Chills1994 said: Around 2004, the Air Force approved LASIK for people wanting to go to Undergraduate Pilot Training. I would imagine there are some negative G’s and positive G’s experienced during UPT. Not to mention that very incredibly small chance of a rapid decompression of a cockpit/cabin. Well, that's kinda invalidates my understanding, thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GOF Posted May 28 Share Posted May 28 The simplest and least expensive solution is to have a pair of glasses made up with your normal everyday/walking around distance prescription... but have the focus point set at around 25-inches (or whatever the exact distance from your eyes to the front sight when in your normal firing position is) instead of the 20-feet common for distance lenses. This is often used by folks working on computers, and any optical shop can do it. The front sight will be sharp and clear. The targets a touch blurry. But with my glasses set this way I can read a license plate at 13-yards, and see lead splash hits on a 35-yard Steel Challenge plate. I have no problems with irons with these glasses. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chills1994 Posted May 28 Share Posted May 28 4 hours ago, leam said: Well, that's kinda invalidates my understanding, thanks! Just an FYI… the World Skeet Shoot is Sept. 27th through Oct 5th in San Antonio at the National Shooting Complex. I bet you could always call the National Shooting Complex to ask if any eye docs have vendor booths there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deerslayer Posted May 28 Share Posted May 28 (edited) I don't wear glasses, but I have contacts and ran into the same problem. My solution was to compromise my dominant eye with a lens with about half the correction that it needed for distance. It would focus farther than the two feet or so where the front sight would be, but distant objects were still fuzzy. My rationale was that I need it to focus on things farther than the front sight in a match and I rarely hard focus on the front sight anyway. Ben Stoeger says you should never focus on the front sight, and he kinda knows what he's doing. Edited May 28 by deerslayer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GOF Posted May 29 Share Posted May 29 If the iron sights are sharply focused and the target is slightly blurry you can still get a good hit at any distance. If the iron sights are blurry and the target is sharply focused you can get a good hit at close range... but forget an A Zone hit at 15 yards and beyond. Just saying. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe4d Posted May 30 Share Posted May 30 my wife is an eye doc,, so I got to play with all kinds of things.. For me, my old original distance only glasses seem to work best.. The are a pretty mild prescription. Originally just used them for driving.. I tried, front sight right eye , distance left.. it wasnt bad,, cant do any kinda bifocal or transition... SO you may find some kinda compromise lense,, not quite what would be a normal prescription.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
392heminut Posted May 30 Share Posted May 30 On 5/22/2024 at 5:33 PM, leam said: I need corrective lenses to see far out, but the lenses I have blur the front sight. Should I wear non-corrective shooting glasses? Is there another option? One idea might be a red dot. However, I've never used one, and am between jobs right now so a new blaster isn't in the cards. I see that you're in Texas! Like another poster said, if you can find an eye Dr. that will let you bring your gun with you that is better. I know an eye doc in Texas (I believe he is in the Waco area) that is a shooter and would have no problem with you bringing your gun with you and working with you to find the best solution for you. If this is something that would interest you, PM me and I'll get you his contact info. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shred Posted May 30 Share Posted May 30 I have a guy in Austin that's great, although partly retired now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MHicks Posted May 30 Share Posted May 30 On 5/28/2024 at 11:08 AM, deerslayer said: I don't wear glasses, but I have contacts and ran into the same problem. My solution was to compromise my dominant eye with a lens with about half the correction that it needed for distance. It would focus farther than the two feet or so where the front sight would be, but distant objects were still fuzzy. My rationale was that I need it to focus on things farther than the front sight in a match and I rarely hard focus on the front sight anyway. Ben Stoeger says you should never focus on the front sight, and he kinda knows what he's doing. Yes. A shooter with good eyesight can use more target focus while still seeing the front sight well enough. If your eyes are to the point where the front sight is a terrible blur with uncorrected vision, that's not the same thing. You need correction so that you can see the front sight pretty clearly even when you're using target focus that makes the front sight slightly blurry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GOF Posted May 30 Share Posted May 30 You don't really need to bring your gun to the eye doctor's office. Just stand in front of a wall with your normal stance and shooting grip - aim at the wall -- and maintain grip and stance while moving slowly to the wall until the muzzle touches it. Then measure the distance between the wall and the upper bridge of your nose. That measurement, in inches, is all the optical shop needs to set the eye glass lens focus distance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shred Posted May 30 Share Posted May 30 FWIW, that was the wrong distance for me. Worked great to see dust specks on the front sight but was way too blurry further downrange. Went back to the eye doc and we clicked the machine out a few clicks while looking at the sights until I got a "plenty good enough" front sight picture and much more clarity downrange. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deerslayer Posted May 31 Share Posted May 31 10 hours ago, MHicks said: you can see the front sight pretty clearly even when you're using target focus that makes the front sight slightly blurry. I’m confused Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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