The UK's Finest Independent Forum for Shooters and Gun Owners. Est 2010.

It's the town clock he can't see when tare-arsing on his power house road burner!

If you go to the optician, have him hang the eye chart at a distance which is 2x the distance between your eye and the front sight. If your front sight is 30" from your eye, hang the eye chart 60" away. The correction that he finds with this chart, hung at what is called the hyperfocal distance of the front sight, is the optimum lens for shooting for you.

Also, when he refracts you, ask him to measure to the nearest 1/8 diopter. Many only measure to the nearest 1/4, but for shooting you are looking at a single invariate distance, so it pays to tune it a little closer.

Art

ShootingSight wrote:If you go to the optician, have him hang the eye chart at a distance which is 2x the distance between your eye and the front sight. If your front sight is 30" from your eye, hang the eye chart 60" away. The correction that he finds with this chart, hung at what is called the hyperfocal distance of the front sight, is the optimum lens for shooting for you.

Also, when he refracts you, ask him to measure to the nearest 1/8 diopter. Many only measure to the nearest 1/4, but for shooting you are looking at a single invariate distance, so it pays to tune it a little closer.

Art

Well first time to a UK Optician in many years and it was interesting, "1/8 diopter sir? Sorry we only work with 1/4." I ended up seeing someone about glasses who told me I was -6.75L and -8.0R followed by seeing the contact lens person as I wear contacts. All I wanted was a pair of glasses to make up the difference between my contacts -6.0L and -7.0R and where I should be as I get on quite well with my contacts for every day life. Best he could say was go to -5.25L (some new contact for close/distant work) and -7.5R and he seemed completely lost when I mentioned shooting. I will call in and see my Optician in Denmark when we go over next. I have been talking to her for the last ten years and trust her implicitly, more to the point I am sure she will better understand what I want.

I suppose it depends how much an optician is willing to accede to your requests (rather than treating you as a number to be processed, and assuming you are ignorant in your demands), but the thing to do is to have then refract you at the 2x distance while you are wearing your everyday contacts. The resulting prescription should be a mild positive lens in the +0.5 to +0.75 range.

As stated above, for $30 I will sell you a frame with 5 test lenses in it that ought to span the range of the difference you are talking about, so you could wear your contacts, go to the range with your rifle, and try adding the different lens powers, and see for yourself which one works best.

Art