A conversation I had with a private client about vision and shooting.
"With regard to your vision, don't get me started on the optometric community. Your current setup (bifocal contacts with the dominant eye set far in the center) is extremely unlikely to be useful for shooting at high speed. However, that is the way they set people up in general. Thank god you haven't had Lasik; I have had several students who were doomed for shooting by the way they were done.
Your right eye needs to be able to focus on the front sight. My suggestion is that you talk to your optometrist about getting a set of monovision contacts. They can give you a trial set so it's not expensive. The way this needs to be set up is to have the dominant eye focus close and the non-dominant eye focus at infinity. You may get resistance from the optometrist for this setup, if they won't accommodate you, find another optometrist who will.
Not everyone can tolerate this arrangement but the majority of people (about 66%) can. It may take a few days to get used to it and you may only be able to [use] it initially for a few hours at a time. Ultimately, this is the best setup for shooters who have experienced 'age related vision changes', as you so nicely put it. I wear this arrangement all the time, as do a number of other shooters I know.
The distance for the dominant eye is the distance from your eye to the front sight when the pistol is held with two hands and head erect. In my case, it is 22 inches but yours may be different. It's best to actually have a friend measure this with a yardstick. I brought my inert orange gun to the optometrist and had him measure it but he is a casual shooter and it didn't freak him out.
I also have my glasses set up this way. Talk about a BJJ match with the optometrists over that one. They will tell you it doesn't work at all but that is absolutely untrue. The percentage of people who can tolerate it is much lower than with contacts due to the different focal lengths but some people can tolerate it. I know a number of older shooters use it regularly or exclusively."
Hi!
ReplyDeleteI am an optometrist with a little bit of shooting experience, and a sports vision training practice, so I can understand frustration of trying to explain what you need for a vision correction for shooting.
One thing I'd consider would be a low-add multifocal contact lens in the shooting eye (SE) and a distance lens in the non-shooting eye (NSE).
Or, if you don't wear contact lenses, perhaps a pair of glasses with a distance lens in the NSE and "just enough plus to clear the front sight" in the NSE.
The idea of bringing a "blue gun" is a good one, and I've often done measurements with law enforcement officers with their service weapons (unloaded and behind closed doors, of course.) Another thing is not to overlook the airgun community (where I started), which has become quite sophisticated in both competition and hunting as the guns have become a lot more sophisticated (especially in the UK and Canada, where firearms are harder to obtain.)
In defense of my colleagues, the demands of shooting are unlike anything else I can think of, and I do have one request: we survive by being paid for our time, and some of these "out of the box" corrections can take more time to fine tune, so please bear that in mind; and insurance doesn't cover the extra time it might take to fine tune a shooting Rx.
For a more complete discussion of the options, you can check out one of my articles (actually, it's a two-part series.)
https://chrissajnog.com/vision-shooting-aging-part-1/
Regards,
Robert A. Buonfiglio, OD
Eye on Performance Sports Vision Training
http://eyeonperformance.com