Do glasses sometimes cause poor handgun shooting?

[Baccusboy]

I ask this because I notice that different colored light is bent somehow when I look out of my prescription glasses at different angles. It's most noticeable when I look at an LED number or any kind of LED, really. As I turn my head, and the number travels toward the far end of my lens, I can see the number appear to shift and move around in position. That got me thinking... do prescription glasses also affect shooting accuracy? Would I be better wearing contacts when shooting? I don't mention rifles in the title, because it seems logical to me that being closer to the sight would remove this issue, correct?

 

[Mooseman]

I wear progressive lenses. I cannot shoot with my glasses on. Fortunately, my distance vision is okay uncorrected.

 

[iH8DemLibz]

My glasses turn my red-dots into 1-1/2 red-dots.

Good luck with your search.

I can't find anything that will make focusing on three different objects at the same time possible.

Most of my guns have scopes, red-dots, or peep sights at this point so I can shoot without glasses.


PS: Aging sucks.

 

[lx1x]

It depends really..

Near vs far side has its own downfall.

Like moose.. I have trifocals and can't see crap without it.

 

[Streetgang]

I use progressives, I shoot better than when I wore bifocals but not as good as when I needed no glasses. Of course I practiced a lot more when I wore no glasses.
I do find it more difficult to acquire targets with glasses.

 

[jimbobborg]

Everyone is a little different. Personally, when I wear contacts or regular distance glasses, I can't focus on the front sight of a handgun or long gun. If I don't wear glasses, the front sight is still out of focus because my vision starts blurring 1.2' away from my face. With bifocals, if I look at the front sight with the distance part, it's blurry, but in focus with the closer part of the lens. The problem is the close focus part is on the bottom of the lenses. For shooters, the close/far sections need to be reversed.

 

[DC-W]

My glasses + astigmatism screw with me really bad. I have the same issues with LED lights that you describe. Greens and blues are particularly hard to focus, but the human eye has a very difficult time with blue LEDs anyways. The green BP LED gas price signs kill me, lol.

Despite that, I don't think I'm a terrible shot.

 

[Baccusboy]

On top of this, I have a worsening essential tremor in my fingers and hands.

Sucks almost as bad as my shooting.

 

[Boom Boom]

Baccusboy, it's your lenses. It's why I have Zeiss Single Vision AS lenses now. For example, where my arms cross the lower edge of my lenses, my old lenses had a large jump that drove me nuts. With the Zeiss lenses, the jump is completely gone. Huge difference.

On top of this, I have a worsening essential tremor in my fingers and hands.

Sucks almost as bad as my shooting.

Don't sweat it. I have it pretty bad, too. Noticeable to others. Crazy enough, moderate coffee consumption mostly eliminates it. Doesn't make sense to me but it works.

 

[Pinecone]

There are a couple of issues with glasses and shooting.

1) Glasses are not set up to focus at the distance the front sight is. Some serious shooters have their eye doc make them a set of glasses to focus on the front sight.

2) Glasses for general use do not have the center of the correction in the right place for shooting. With most shooting, your head is down and you look through the upper part of the lens. My shooting glasses sit higher on my face with the center of the lens up higher than normal. To do "normal" things with those glasses, I have to tilt my head down and look through the glasses as designed.

 

[OrbitalEllipses]

At what age does ET typically present? I've had shaky hands my whole life...

Pinecone brings up some very good points - especially dropping of the head and looking up through the lenses. Glasses were a real annoyance for me so I decided to get LASIK correction...unfortunately it didn't fix my astigmatism which presents more noticeably during dropped head position. It also made both eyes so close in dominance that two-eyed shooting is difficult. So while there are numerous options moving forward from simple corrective lenses, you need to carefully consider what you're willing to put up with.

Probably won't make you a better shot though. My LASIK certainly didn't.

 

[Mike OTDP]

There are several factors at work here.

First, there is chromatic aberration. Light will refract through a lens differently depending on the color (i.e. frequency). A good camera lens is actually a laminate of different materials to correct for this...and it's higher-grade glass. Most eyeglasses are one step above a beer bottle. Polycarbonate lenses are worse - I had a pair once that were totally unwearable because of it.

Second, all optics display a certain amount of off-axis aberration.

http://www.allaboutvision.com/lenses/how-to-choose.htm has some good information.

Third, you can't focus on three things at once. Period. It's optically impossible. Young shooters can rapidly switch focus from target to sights. Older shooters...not so much. Competitors in the precision disciplines normally get shooting glasses with the lens ground so that we have maximum focus on the front sight...you don't need to see the target clearly, just the front sight. Optical sight are very popular if the rules permit.

 

[kenpo333]

Being near sighted. I use the bifocal for short range, 3 to 7 yards. Don't need anything after that. Wife is usually a really good shot. Got new graduated, np line glasses and literally could not hit the broad side of the barn. Went and got regular bifocals and everything back to normal

 

[ultraplanet]

Been struggling with my eyes too. I have a pair of computer glasses, lite readers in my prescription optimized for about 2 feet using the whole lense not a bifocal. Work great for seeing the front sight but targets at 15 or 20 yards are more difficult to see and it takes about half an hour to get used to walking around while wearing them. Not a good solution in my opinion.

 

[Baccusboy]

At what age does ET typically present? I've had shaky hands my whole life...

I have had an essential tremor for over 15 years (first noticed in my late 20's). I went to the doctor then, and he said it was an essential tremor. My pointer/trigger finger shakes when I point at something, and sadly, it also shakes when I'm staging a trigger! So basically, I cannot 100% reliably stage a trigger unless it's a heavy one, if I'm really having a bad day.

It has been growing worse lately, over the past year or so, but I've been putting off seeing a doctor. I live in Korea now, and the previous doctor was in the USA. The Korean doctor ran some tests, and said the same thing. If your hand is shaking during an action (or when your muscle is flexing, if I remember correctly) then it's likely an essential tremor. If your hand shakes when it's completely at rest, well then you've possibly got a much more serious issue.

He gave me some meds (alpha or beta blockers -- I forget which) that I can take if it begins to bother me a lot, but I haven't bothered to take those.

He also said that an ET peaks around my age (mid 40's) and may actually improve as I grow older. Some people learn that drinking alcohol will improve the problem, but he, of course, joked that I shouldn't get into that as a form of medicating it.

Coffee doesn't help mine -- makes it worse. If I am low on sugar, then it gets worse until I eat, but it's always there at some level, regardless. It sometimes bugs me a bit when I'm writing, which is what really drives me nuts.

Consequently, I don't bother shooting much over 10 yards anymore. When I get to shoot (summer on return trips to the states), I usually do a lot of quick plinking plates at 7 to 10 yards.

 

[tdt91]

Cheap sunglasses will throw off depth perception and screw you up too.

 

[Blaster229]

Aside from slow accurate target shooting, all the more reason to have your point shooting skills (grip and trigger control) up to par. Might be a day when it is gonna count and you won't have the pleasure of throwing a pair of glasses on.

 

[jjbduke2004]

OP, this is probably like making you drink water from a firehouse, but this is a link to articles by Norman Wong, an optometrist and competitive bullseye pistol shooter.

http://www.starreloaders.com/edhall/nwongarts.html

I know for riflery, glasses may be helping you see up code (reading) or at a distance (focal length of infinity) when you need to be focused on the front sight of the rifle. We have a few rules of thumb (depending on rifle sight radius) that suggest adding/subtracting from an existing prescription to make a shooting prescription.

 

[SHMEEB]

Sometimes I like to wrap myself in a blanket, cover myself in cheese, and pretend I'm a burrito. But first, I put my contacts on. The ones for astygmatism. They don't affect my shooting whatsoever.

 

[Bafflingbs]

I wear bifocals, so I had to adjust my head position a little. But, if I do the proper thing and focus only on the front sight, they actually help me. The front blade is crystal clear now.