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Glasses and contacts
Glasses and contacts
I am new to
shooting with glasses and I hate it! I want to go to contact lenses. Should
I tell the doctor that I need to focus at the sight radius or should I tell
him I need to see at a distance? I shoot an ar15 in dcm matches. My
45-year-old eyes are starting to slip. I got my first glasses this month.
After shooting with them I think contacts will help with a lot of the
problems the glasses cause. Any help would be much appreciated...pat
Glasses and contacts
jetmech:
Have you considered trying a Jones diopter rear sight? Depending on where
your eyesight is, you may be able to shoot without prescription glasses
using a Jones sight. I'm 48 and have to use reading glasses, but a plus .5
diopter lets me see a good, sharp front sight. Bob's phone no. is
602-840-2176,Mon.-Thu.6-8pm MST.
Glasses and contacts
Hi Pat, - -
My best solution has been to order a pair of Knobloch Shooting glasses. Have
the prescription lens measured for the exact distance from your shooting eye
to the front sight This works well. I wear bi-focal lenses, and have
considered another option - have the shooting eye lens ground for the
eye-to-sight correction, and the other lens ground for the normal bi-focal
prescription. Sound as if it should work, but I haven't tried it (yet!).
Hope this helps. -Bob Hendry
Glasses and contacts
I normally
wear contacts during matches, however, I have had problems with my vision
'fading' if the contacts dry out a bit or float when I blink. This isn't too
cool during the rapids since one second you have good focus on the front
sight and the next you see nothing but a gray blur. I keep a spare set of
glasses and a contact case and solution in my shooting kit just in case I
run into problems. If you have problems seeing the front sight, I concur
with the Jones diopter. It does help.
Glasses and contacts
The Jones
diopters are at http://www.bjonessights.com
Glasses and contacts
Hi Jet Mech,
hope this helps. I have worn daily wear 'toric' contacts for some years now
and have enjoyed some success. As you can surmise from the other posts in
this thread contacts, more precisely your reaction to them is a very
individual thing. When I started shooting in competition I recognized some
problems with regular glasses, specifically parallax, because I didn't think
I was looking through the optical center of the lens over my shooting eye.
Initially, after getting used to wearing them I did well with the contacts,
but a few years back I was reading Jim Owens book, "The big Lie" or what
ever and when I tried his drill of putting a pencil mark on the rear of the
front sight I realized I couldn't see it very well. At first opportunity, I
returned to my practitioner, rifle and all, and they tried different lenses
until I could see the front sight clearly. I tried this offhand as well as
prone because my stock weld is different in each position. And a few years
later, at Perry I had Bob Jones install one of his lenses in the rear
aperture of my M1A, and the combination still works great. The problems
still reside with the jerk behind the trigger but I can't blame it on
vision. I do notice that if I don't break the shoot quickly after I get on
the gun my accuracy drops off noticeably, but from all my experience laying
on the gun trying to dress up the sight picture is futile, because your
accuracy will deteriorate while you hold your breath anyway! I once spoke
with a Navy optometrist that is also a Distinguished shooter after he
examined me while we were both stationed in Italy, and his comment then was
to not waste my time with contacts, a good set of Knoblochs would serve me
better. Obviously I didn't pursue his advise, my feeling has always been
that fooling around adjusting them on the firing line detracted from the
time I spend on other equally important things while I get ready to shoot
especially if I'm trying to do all that stuff during a hurried prep time. I
really do feel that if you can get used to wearing them, and take the time
with your practitioner to get the right diopter actually using the rifle to
do so that contacts are an excellent choice, but as I mentioned initially it
is a highly personal things, one size does definitely not fit all! Sorry,
for the long post, but not a simple subject. HTH
Glasses and contacts
Pat, I'm not the HP guru, but I've been shooting most of my life. I must say
that my experiences with contact lenses and any sort of precision shooting
are similar to dmcali and GcS's, namely no success, so far. When I
concentrate, they "gray out"; I imagine that they are drying out from my not
blinking often enough. When I blink, the world clears, but I must "rebuild"
my sight picture.... then it grays out... ad infinitum.... I just put up
with precautions to avoid fogging and sweat streaks on my safety (-1.50
prescription) glasses. I have a friend that shoots smallbore and a bit of
HP, who says that the old style hard contacts are the way to go, but I
haven't shelled out the bucks for an experimental pair of contacts, yet.
HTH, Tommy
Glasses and contacts
I have used Champion frames for most of my shooting career and have never
worn contacts; call me paranoid, but I have never liked the concept of
putting something in my eyes. I have several friends who have alternated
between contacts and glasses over the years and the main complaint they have
always had over contacts is because the eye is open for a somewhat
unnaturally long period, they find they suffer more from dust and dryness
than when they wear contacts normally. One good friend of mine used to
reckon that in the mornings he needed at least 90 minutes before he could
shoot in contacts. The universal problem with shooting glasses is the
weather, but I just carry around a lot of chamois and towels! - Bill