Any suggestions for prescriptions? I'm getting older and my eyesight is getting worse(go figure). I use a moderate power for near, a little bit for far, and have slight astigmatism in both eyes. It sounds horrible when I write it down like this, but it's not terrible. My current glasses are progressive ground and this plays hell with my front sight picture based on my shooting position. Here's my question, would a single vision prescription be helpful. These would be just for range use with most shooting done between 5 and 25 yards.
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Eyeglass Prescriptions
- Thread starter Skinner
- Start date
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WanderingSol07
Sharpshooter
For the pistol range I have pair single vision with the focus at my front sight. Makes the target a bit blurry but makes it much more fun to shoot.
I had a pair that was focused on close-in for pistol sights in my right eye and clear in the left. It really gave me a headache. I eventually just went with 150 readers for both eyes and let the target blur a little more than normal. It was a cheaper and better solution for me. 5 pairs of readers on Amazon for less than $15.
My optometrist set me up with a lens prescription that has my distance in the top half of the lens and the bifocal is set to focus at the front sight of the pistol. Ordered with inexpensive safety glass frames from Walmart. Under $80. These are full line bifocals and the line is set dead center. Ever so slight tip of the head brings the front sight or the target in focus. Since my optometrist is my nephew, it was not a problem having my pistol in the exam room to get the measurements for where to get the focus. You may want to check with your optometrist before you show up with your gun.
I have progressive lenses for quite a few years now. The current perscription is good for pistol shooting with open sights.
The lenses are Crizal by Zeiss. They are called digital correction. Getting the transition point just right for front sight focus is very important.
Ideally the sights are in focus with the target just above the sights in focus.
A real key factor to get the glasses working the best for you is to get the glasses adjusted to be as close to your eyes as possible.
The lenses are Crizal by Zeiss. They are called digital correction. Getting the transition point just right for front sight focus is very important.
Ideally the sights are in focus with the target just above the sights in focus.
A real key factor to get the glasses working the best for you is to get the glasses adjusted to be as close to your eyes as possible.
Call and get an appointment with Dr. Gordon Boyd in Crawfordsville, and mention/be prepared for a discussion about shooting and what you need.
He knows things.
I recommend you discuss a dual-digital surfaced lens with the script set to correct at 2x the distance to your front sight. If you also need add (+ power) for reading, loading mags, etc., then discuss an “office lens” with Gordon. I’m wearing one as I type this. In a way, it’s like a progressive lens that’s NOT zoned...the add is digitally modeled into the lens, increasing gradually toward the bottom (where your mags and speedometer are, but the front sight and target are not).
Perfection. Expensive.
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Crizal Alize is a product owned by Essilor, a French conglomerate, not Zeiss.
Different point: I do not recommend polycarb in a shooting lens, as Trivex has great impact resistance—hypothetically more than polycarb—but greater optical clarity, and yet is still a very high refractive index material. As such, and PARTICULARLY for dual-digital lenses that get a lot thicker at the edges, Trivex can be made into relatively thin and light lenses.
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Sounds like the middle lens on my trifocals. I can see the front sight plainly now. The Ameriglo Spartans helped, they helped more when the front sight wasn't blurry.
Here is more infomation from
https://www.m14forum.com/threads/shooting-glasses.57770/#post-364609
#4 • Aug 24, 2008
In shooting irons, you want to get your eye to in relaxed and perfect focus at its hyperfocal distance, which according to optical math, works out to be 2x the distance from your eye to the front sight. For a Garand that is about 68 inches. I think the M-1A is similar.
If your eye is focussed at 68 inches, you will have good balance of focus between the front sight, and focus on the target.
The relaxed eye has a certain distance it will focus at, normally infinity if you don't wear glasses. The ciliary muscle in your eye can then exert itself to squeeze the lens, and pull your focus back to close objects. When you are young, you simply exert this muscle to focus correctly when shooting. After you pass 40, the lens can start to harden, so the ciliary muscle needs to exert itself more and more to get your focus to that 68 inch point. Eventually, the lens gets so hard, it cannot, and you lose the front sight. Even if you can get a front sight, the muscle is really straining to do it, so you will often see that you have a front sight in the morning, but after a day of shooting, you have exhausetd the muscle, and you can't get a front sight by afternoon. You might also notice that you can get a front sight, but if you don't squeeze the shot off in under 10 seconds, it starts to fade. The muscle is simply not strong enough to do a max exertion, and hold it there for an extended time.
An alternate way to bring your focus from its relaxed position to the 68 inch mark is to add a corrective lens. If you dial the power just right, your eye will not only see both the target and the front sight, but will be relaxed while doing it. Strange as it sounds, you will actually get a better sight picture with a correctly tuned lens than an 18 year old will, because while you can both see a good image, the 18 year old has to do some muscle exertion (granted, not much), but you will make none.
Short of some degenerative eye disease (cateracts, macular degeneration, detached retine, etc), there is no reason 'old' eyes cannot see well enough to get a clear sight picture with irons.
Now, how much lens? If your eye is focussed at infinity, and you look through a lens, the image will be in focus at the lense's focal length. If you are in a relaxed focus at infinity, you therefore want a 68" focal length lens. Focal lengths are measured in diopters, where the diopter is the inverse of the lens focal length in meters. A lens with a 2meter focal length is a 1/2 diopter lens, a 4m focal length is a 1/4 diopter lens, and so on. 68" is 1.73m, so the correct lens (if you have perfect infinity vision) would be 1/1.73 = +0.58 diopters. Since lenses typically come in 1/4 or 1/8 steps, you would round down to a 0.5 as your best correction.
For an AR, with it's 20" bbl and assuming 2" eye relief, the magic distance turns out to 44" = 1.12m, which calls for a 0.89 diopter. Round down to a +0.75 (not sure that a 0.875 is available).
Diopters can be added. If you do not have perfect infinity correction, you need to get your best infinity correction from your doc, then add +0.5 to that number. If you have good infinity vision, your infinity correction will be 0. If you are near sighted, your infinity correction will be a negative number (eg if you are a -1.5, and add +0.5, you will end up with a -1.0), if you are far sighted, your infinity correction will be a positive number.
Once you get this number, you can get a Bob Jones lens for $28 which will drop into the hood of your M-1A, or get shooting glasses made.
If you want to actually try different powers, I sell small test lens sets (similar to the eye doc's) that you can take to the range with you to look through and see what works best. These are not for actual shooting, but will help you dial the power to what you need.
The other subject to discuss is how big your depth of field is. ie once you have balanced your focus between the sight and the target, exactly how good do they look? Depth of field is controlled by aperture size. The smaller the aperture, the bigger the depth of field, and the better focus you will get on the extremes of distance (the sight being extremely near, and the target being extremely far). For the M-1A, you don't have many choices, but there are 3: the rear hoods are made with either a 0.052" aperture, or a 0.0595" aperture. The size is stamped on the side of the hood. Unless you shoot in dim light a lot, get the smaller of the two. The third option is that I make a competition aperture which uses a rectangular opening, that can get you down to a 0.026" tall opening.
Regards,
Art Neergaard
ShootingSight LLC
www.shootingsight.com
https://www.m14forum.com/threads/shooting-glasses.57770/#post-364609
#4 • Aug 24, 2008
In shooting irons, you want to get your eye to in relaxed and perfect focus at its hyperfocal distance, which according to optical math, works out to be 2x the distance from your eye to the front sight. For a Garand that is about 68 inches. I think the M-1A is similar.
If your eye is focussed at 68 inches, you will have good balance of focus between the front sight, and focus on the target.
The relaxed eye has a certain distance it will focus at, normally infinity if you don't wear glasses. The ciliary muscle in your eye can then exert itself to squeeze the lens, and pull your focus back to close objects. When you are young, you simply exert this muscle to focus correctly when shooting. After you pass 40, the lens can start to harden, so the ciliary muscle needs to exert itself more and more to get your focus to that 68 inch point. Eventually, the lens gets so hard, it cannot, and you lose the front sight. Even if you can get a front sight, the muscle is really straining to do it, so you will often see that you have a front sight in the morning, but after a day of shooting, you have exhausetd the muscle, and you can't get a front sight by afternoon. You might also notice that you can get a front sight, but if you don't squeeze the shot off in under 10 seconds, it starts to fade. The muscle is simply not strong enough to do a max exertion, and hold it there for an extended time.
An alternate way to bring your focus from its relaxed position to the 68 inch mark is to add a corrective lens. If you dial the power just right, your eye will not only see both the target and the front sight, but will be relaxed while doing it. Strange as it sounds, you will actually get a better sight picture with a correctly tuned lens than an 18 year old will, because while you can both see a good image, the 18 year old has to do some muscle exertion (granted, not much), but you will make none.
Short of some degenerative eye disease (cateracts, macular degeneration, detached retine, etc), there is no reason 'old' eyes cannot see well enough to get a clear sight picture with irons.
Now, how much lens? If your eye is focussed at infinity, and you look through a lens, the image will be in focus at the lense's focal length. If you are in a relaxed focus at infinity, you therefore want a 68" focal length lens. Focal lengths are measured in diopters, where the diopter is the inverse of the lens focal length in meters. A lens with a 2meter focal length is a 1/2 diopter lens, a 4m focal length is a 1/4 diopter lens, and so on. 68" is 1.73m, so the correct lens (if you have perfect infinity vision) would be 1/1.73 = +0.58 diopters. Since lenses typically come in 1/4 or 1/8 steps, you would round down to a 0.5 as your best correction.
For an AR, with it's 20" bbl and assuming 2" eye relief, the magic distance turns out to 44" = 1.12m, which calls for a 0.89 diopter. Round down to a +0.75 (not sure that a 0.875 is available).
Diopters can be added. If you do not have perfect infinity correction, you need to get your best infinity correction from your doc, then add +0.5 to that number. If you have good infinity vision, your infinity correction will be 0. If you are near sighted, your infinity correction will be a negative number (eg if you are a -1.5, and add +0.5, you will end up with a -1.0), if you are far sighted, your infinity correction will be a positive number.
Once you get this number, you can get a Bob Jones lens for $28 which will drop into the hood of your M-1A, or get shooting glasses made.
If you want to actually try different powers, I sell small test lens sets (similar to the eye doc's) that you can take to the range with you to look through and see what works best. These are not for actual shooting, but will help you dial the power to what you need.
The other subject to discuss is how big your depth of field is. ie once you have balanced your focus between the sight and the target, exactly how good do they look? Depth of field is controlled by aperture size. The smaller the aperture, the bigger the depth of field, and the better focus you will get on the extremes of distance (the sight being extremely near, and the target being extremely far). For the M-1A, you don't have many choices, but there are 3: the rear hoods are made with either a 0.052" aperture, or a 0.0595" aperture. The size is stamped on the side of the hood. Unless you shoot in dim light a lot, get the smaller of the two. The third option is that I make a competition aperture which uses a rectangular opening, that can get you down to a 0.026" tall opening.
Regards,
Art Neergaard
ShootingSight LLC
www.shootingsight.com
I don’t do well shooting with my bifocals. My optometrist suggested distance on the top and some minor correction for mid distance on the bottom. I haven’t ordered the new glasses yet because of the cost. Right now I am using a pair of single vision glasses that I keep as a backup.
Reverse bifocal Vert. Especially if you tend to put your head/chin/nose down a bit as you press out to the front sight. With the b/f at the top the front sight will be in focus and you won't be holding your head back in an un-natural position for what you are doing. YMMV
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Vert, I have a couple SSP frames and numerous lens for them. I'm not sure how I can get them to you to try out, but you are welcome to try them.
I used the top focal lens when I was still trying to shoot irons. It made the front sight clear but left me seeing normal everywhere else. When I just wore readers, it was okay for the front sight, but it was weird trying to walk around.
The biggest thing with SSP top focal lens is you will have to practice holding your head just right to get the lens on the front sight. Not unlike practicing to find the dot in a red dot optic.
Since I have switched to red dots, I have switched back to bottom focal glasses. This gives me clear vision with the dot and target but when I am loading mags or holstering or any other general "stuff", I have the clarity of the magnification.
If we can work a way for you to try them, I have several different magnifications ranging from 1.5 to 2 I believe. If you liked them, I'll make you a great deal on the lens and you can order just the frame from the company.
Vert, If by computer glasses you mean office progressive lenses (OPL's vs PAL's) you will find that they work. You will have to find the spot in the lens that works. I used them for contests for a while at first since I already was used to them. If you mean a single vision pair set for computer distance only, your distance and near will be compromised.
I switched 2 years ago to the reverse bifocals and prefer it myself. When I shoot iron sights I have what I want up top and when shooting optics it's straight ahead, right through the middle. Scoring is fun. Just have to remember to chin down and hold the kindle up a bit.
BTW, Jinks post above is probably the best post that I've seen on all of the INGO "can't see" threads. Thanks Jinks
