Diopter or what?

First, thanks for all of the good info on here i have really enjoyed learning a lot from you folks!

I am 48 y/old and dealing with changing eyes.

Unfortunately it is both distance, which I just had to get glasses for last year, and I am just now starting to need reading glasses. I have read the articles on Bullseye encyclopedia about working with eye doctor but I have a couple of questions for you guys.

1. What kind of luck have you had with the diopters that mount on the lens of your glasses?

2. Any other options other than specific prescripions.

In shooting bullseye in an indoor range the front site is at a point where neither glasses are ideal to bring it into sharp focus. Since my eyes are in the process of changing in both directions I am trying to find cheaper solutions that might get me by for awhile.

With my distance prescription glasses, when I am shooting one handed bullseye, I can get the sight into focus but it is a real effort and is hard to keep it in focus.

Anyway just trying to see if the diopters is worth trying and what your experiences have been.

thanks so much,

larrupin

If you can use one of those Irises that may help. I couldn't acquire the target fast enough for sustained and rapid with it.

can;t see why the little stick on things would not work.

I got a prescription for distance that is just about 1/4 more than my regular prescription, and that seemed to work. I got them on Decot frames so I can change the lens as my Rx changes.

also if your eyes are "bad" enough you might get reading glasses that work. My eyes were good enough so that reading glasses added too much.

My problem is distance and an astigmatism so I found that nothing worked short of prescription.

I myself deal with astigmatizum and a slight prescription.......Ive found that useing my normal glasses with a blinder on the non-shooting eye and a merit optical attachment on the shooting eye really help......I can shoot open sights again and the dot in my red dots are round....before useing a apeture I couldnt use open sights and my dots all where distorted .....so I would say give one a try......try a home made one firsit and go from there.....I used a piece of black tape with a 1/16 hole punched in it......with cloudy scotch tape over the non-shooting eye as a experiment........of course if you can have custom lens ground for shooting frames that would work as well but a merit optical attachment 50.00 bucks and a blinder 9.00 bucks has got me seeing my sights and dots like I was a kid again and I too am in my late 40's......Keith

Thanks for all the input guys, I really appreciate it!

Keith I really like your idea of trying the black tape first to see how I get along with it. Being a leather worker I have punches of varying sizes so I could easily make a few different ones to try out.

I identify with the red dot thing too, my red dot is anything but round!

Thanks again for all the excellent info here and if anyone else as any other experience or ideas please chime in.

On your dot, you just have to make sure the same part of the tadpole is in the middle every time

Zennioptical.com
Cheap glasses. I've bought several for them with my shooting prescription with different color tints too.

I'm planning on going to Dr. Wong for my "true" shooting prescription next year, but for now, I've had good success with +0.25 adder (to my normal distance rx) for red-dots, and +0.50 adder for iron sights. I don't need reading glasses yet, so my numbers may be lower than what you need. You may end up using +0.50 and +0.75.

Tadpole.....I thought I was the only one that saw that ......



Larrupin...yep those leather punches will be the ticket....you need a clean hole or you will have distortion....One thing I should mention ...I use the merit because it is adjustable ..you will need to adjust the hole size for the amount of light ..indoor or outdoor.....a fixed aperture will work but the adjustable seems MUCH better ...I seem to shoot mostly indoors but I still adjust for open sights or red dot ...I tend to need a smaller hole for opens and can get away with a bigger hole on the dot.......another note ....I had a cheapy $30.00 dot at first it was one of those bubble pack walmart speacils......a 30mm the dot was round even without the apeture ......cant explain that as my ultra dot isnt round till I use the aperture and its a 25mm.......maybe the 30mm lets in more light I cant say for sure ......

Paper puncher,

I think you hit the nail on the head, LIGHT! I finally rigged me up an led light with a magnet base that I could put overhead at the range I shoot at and shine it right on my open sights and that helped my ability to bring sight into focus a bunch. Since my glasses are a pretty mild prescription I really think my problem is light more than lenses. The younger folks at this range think it is plenty bright in there but for me I need a little more light on the sights.

Also when using the Red Dot I have been working on actually focusing on the target with the Red Dot turned down low (per Brian Zins info) and that is working better for me. With the dot turned down the "shape" is not as noticeable distorted. (Also have been working to change my grip to what Zins recommends and I think that is going to help once I get it down, this bullseye stuff is fun!)

Thanks for all the feed back. I think I am still going to eventually get one of the Meritts to play with eventually as well.

I would try the experiment ....you as I have just a mild prescription ....But with 48 yr old eyes the lens dont focus as they did when you was a kid .......light helps but the apeture will further sharpen your sight picture.....like I said try the black tape trick....its free nothing ventured nothing gained........Keith

I just remembered before I bought my Merit....I just braced my gun on the bench at shooting distance then just held up a drill gauge to see if the dot would get round. It did. So I bought the Merit but didn't like it for timed and rapid.

It was also annoying trying to get it to stick in exactly the right place on the lens.

I didnt have any issues with position.....I just leave it on a pair of glasses......and if it pops off it easy to see where it was....All I know is ....it allows me to shoot open sights again and makes my dots round.....without it I dont think I would have been able to stick with bullseye......if mine was to break I would replace it without hessitation . I also use it for Air Pistol.......which I wont use a dot for ......and again without a apeture the IZH-46m would have been a waste of hard earned coin.......I was considering a set of knoblocks and have lens ground but that was a costly option.......so being able to stick a apeture and a blinder on my distance glasses was a easy and effective answer to my vision problems........well of course I guess laser surgery is a option .....but 59.00 bucks cured me.........

Paper Puncher,

Just for clarification, are you putting the Merit on your prescription eyeglasses or just using it with regular shooting glasses.

May be a dumb question but I didn't know if the Merit made enough of a distance that you don't need the distance prescrip.

Thanks again,

larrupin,

PS sent you a pm with my info for the bullets. Thanks,

Sorry to hear about your eyes - welcome to the club, it sucks but we must deal with it.

I gave up on iron sights of any type, style, or color. The only thing that I can see in focus now is a red dot which allows me to focus on both the dot and the target at the same time. I am sure at some point I will need glasses to accomplish just that too, but for now I can do it with the glasses I have. My depth of field is so small, I can't stand to read anymore (I have bifocals). However, the red dots seem to allow me to focus on the dot and the target just fine.

For what it is worth, I don't both with any of the eyeglass gizmos. I found they they did the opposite of what they were suppose to do - caused me plenty of distractions. No blinders, no covers for the weak eye, no diopters (small holes) for the strong eye, just nothing. They all seemed to create more problems than they solved.

With all that said, I will say that if you are having troubles with eye sight, it can be a big problem for this sport. So far for me, the red dot sights have solved most of my visual problems.

Good luck

Chris