Prescription glasses for shooting with iron sights?

For anyone reading this in Victoria, and experiencing the same issues, Dr. Stephen Taylor at Mayfair Optometric is a highly ranked PPC shooter, he can set you up right. (He'll also make you look dumb if you complain about your pistol's accuracy, but that's another story - lol)
 
You guys are something else, as an American I have to ask this question.............................

Don't you have any cheap bastards in Canada who understand how a camera aperture works?

I'm 63 and have chronologically gifted eyesight and also watch what Olympic Shooters use in competition.

Below shooting glasses costing big bucks that put a big dent in your wallet.

http://www.pyramydair.com/blog/2007/09/shooting-glasses.html

What a cheap bastard uses, a cheap pair of flip up sun glasses with a small hole drilled in the plastic lens.
NOTE: Below are for shooting a rifle and the hole is off center, for a pistol the hole would be in the center of the lens.



F-stop and the hole in my sunglasses explained.......watch the birdie.



Now stop your #####ing and crying and drill a small hole.


I think I'll try that.
 
One thing that you should do is get your glasses a bit higher than usual. When you take aim, your head tilts downward slightly, and having oversized shooting glasses that have more area toward the top allows you to look through the lens. With regular sized glasses, there is a distinct possibility of looking OVER the top rim of the lens and not through the lens.

Also, when I was shooting pistol a lot, I had a bit of a rubber suction cup that had a hole through the center. It sure tightened up groups, and acted sort of like a peep sight that was attached to your glasses. Don't know if you can still buy them though.

Great idea .. remember the brand?
 
As Buffdog alluded to, I had a problem shooting while wearing glasses: head forward, and also I found myself looking through a very small area in the upper left corner of my right lens. I found this frustrating, so I went with a set of these Champion shooting glasses:




I had a spare single vision lens inserted into the circular right lens frame. These glasses are fully adjustable to your personal needs. Not cheap: I paid $210 in 2009. The lens work was extra.
 
I use one set of Varga glasses and iris for pistol with prescription lens for pistol front sight distance.
Another set of Varga glasses for rifle with different prescription lens for rifle sight front sight distance.
And a Merit iris for my regular glasses when doing pistol action style shooting with my everyday glasses.

Real Olympic style gasses have the great advantage of enabling you set the lens angle square to rear sights, 90° to the bore so you do not get varying prismatic distortion/ parallax no matter what angle your head is at in relation to the rifle or pistol. So long as you don't change your lens angle while shooting, your shots should group nicely.

Varga:
http://www.shooting-varga.cz/varga2006/index.php?idAktualni=19&jazyk=eng

Merit:
http://www.bullseyegear.com/bullseyepistol/product.php?productid=69


Lyman Hawkeye:
http://www.lymanproducts.com/lyman/sights/hawkeye.php

others:
http://www.spinellisonsandfather.com/37301.html
http://www.schiesssport-buinger.de/shooting/Gehmann-stick-on-adjustable-iris
 
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Diopter - I didn't know that Viagara made optics! A word to you 47 year olds that are belly-aching about getting old - the myopia is merely the tip of the iceberg. Impotence usually strikes within three months of your vision failing..............then the incontinence hits. Within two years you'll have to wear diapers when you're sitting at the bench rest! Not easy trying to concentrate on getting tight groups when you're covered in mud!

Dave
 
Yes you can get lenses made to put the front sight in focus, BUT this will not help your depth of field. Looking through the pin hole increases your depth of field and then you will be able to see the rear sight, the front sight and the target sharply.

Just try it at home, if you wear glasses get some masking tape (or duct tape if your Canadian) put a pin hole in the tape and then place it on your glasses and take a peek.

Remember when you get older you start to focus like a camera at a single point, the pin hole increases the depth of field and brings things closer and further away into sharper focus.

If the pin hole trick doesn't work for you then you could make being a Hockey referee your new hobby.

 
That's why an iris is needed to get the target into reasonable focus.
Most of the target rifles I shoot with have diopter style irises, no problem.
Pistol glasses have the iris, no problem.
Lens precription should be weighted towards getting the front sight in sharp focus, target in reasonable focus, so that a round black center stay round and not egg shapped or worse like like figure 8. How much depends on indiviuals prescription and the varitaions between near and far focus. Iris does the rest same as a iris in a camera. smaller the hole the more in focus and the darker the image.

I need -3.75 to -4.00 for distance and -2.00 for reading and close focus.

If you have diopters, you can get irises with corrective lens built in.
 
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You guys are something else, as an American I have to ask this question.............................

Don't you have any cheap bastards in Canada who understand how a camera aperture works?

Biged, you have convinced me. I did know of this before I started the thread, but haven't tried it yet. I will make up some tape apertures for my glasses and see if it solves my issues without needing prescription glasses. My problem is only rifle, I have no trouble with handguns (besides a lack of talent), can get the target and sights to focus just fine. It is my inability to clearly see the target at 100+yds that is killing me at the moment.

Anybody know how small the hole should be in the tape?


Mark
 
...I'm 63 and have chronologically gifted eyesight...

Heh heh heh... I'm 2 years younger but also have "chronologically gifted eyesight", which started when I was in my early 40s. I am using my glasses (progressives) more and more now, even for shooting, although I can get by w/o them, so I'll be looking for a proper pair of prescription safety glasses soon. (This is just for non-competition pistol shooting.)

But I have to ask: Where did you find those clip-on sunglasses? I've been trying to find a pair for several weeks now. Used to be you could pick them up at any drug store, but none here seem to have them and Rite-Aid and Walgreens in WA don't seem to have them, either. All I can find are spring-loaded monstrosities which are a PITA to take on and off. I have proper sunglasses but sometimes it would be handy to have the old flip-ups.

(ps: Hopefully you won't need your glasses to use your Glock effectively if the SHTF!)

:) Stuart
 
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Those are excellent, where do I find them?


Mark

You make them yourself out of ordinary shooting eye protection, and epoxy on an iris diaphragm. This one is about 35 bucks:
"http://www.ebay.ca/itm/IRIS-DIAPHRAGM-Aperture-blade-for-camera-lens-adapter-/200587303844?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2eb3ef5ba4&_uhb=1

Some camera gurus might know where to get them cheap. For 50 bucks you should have a good adjustable system going. The adjustment would be really useful.
You could use clear lenses and not drill a hole.
 
If the SHTF during a Zombie attack and I loose my glasses I'll just switch to my AR15 and lay down plenty of suppressing fire. :ar15:

Fortunately we don't have zombies north of 49- because we're not allowed enough mag. capacity for suppressing fire. Best we can do is pick 'em off one by one with an SMLE or Garand.

Found the flip-up sunglasses: $16.49 on Amazon (of course.)

:)
 
You make them yourself out of ordinary shooting eye protection, and epoxy on an iris diaphragm. This one is about 35 bucks:
"http://www.ebay.ca/itm/IRIS-DIAPHRAGM-Aperture-blade-for-camera-lens-adapter-/200587303844?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2eb3ef5ba4&_uhb=1

Some camera gurus might know where to get them cheap. For 50 bucks you should have a good adjustable system going. The adjustment would be really useful.
You could use clear lenses and not drill a hole.

I was wondering if that was the case. If the tape aperture works out, I will check out the iris.


Thanks,
Mark
 
Fortunately we don't have zombies north of 49- because we're not allowed enough mag. capacity for suppressing fire. Best we can do is pick 'em off one by one with an SMLE or Garand.

Found the flip-up sunglasses: $16.49 on Amazon (of course.)

:)

OK just do it the hard way and strain your eyes, here is your practice target. f:P:2:

 
Having the same issues. Picked up a merit suction cup diopter and now I can see pistols front sight. Had optometrist put prescription high up on shooting glasses for when shooting prone. Now am trying to find a flip up frame. Irritates the crap out of me to have to remove glasses to look through spotting scope after each shot.
 
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