Prescription Shooting Glasses???? Any Suggestions??

I am looking at picking up a pair of Decot shooting glasses and was wondering what other shooters are using indoors or outdoors? What lens colors? What brand? ect...

Thanks,

Jeff S.

I use Dr. Norman Wong OD (bullseye master in SF), who did my normal rx (which turns out is the best for the red dot for me), and then an iron sights rx. Lens colors are subjective to a degree and depends on the environment. I have a bunch of glasses in different tints and transparencies. For indoor and cloudy conditions I have a light yellow and darker yellow. For outdoor I have a light gray, and a darker brown.

If you google norman wong, he has a document that you can print out and bring to your local optometrist who can then use it as a guide to help you find your iron sights rx.

If you want good clear ones try gargoyles, they have lens technology that has zero distortion.

Decot Hy-Wyd with a right lens focused on my front sight and a normal prescription lens on the left side. I've been using them over 20 years for high power rifle, skeet, IDPA and Bullseye. I just keep changing the lenses to keep up with my eye sight changes. They fit great.

I use prescription safety glasses with clear lenses and side shields. I also use a pair of tinted "fitover" glasses when I need a tint, orange for clay targets and yellow for bullseye. I have to remove my side shields to use the fitover frames with my safety glasses.

I have used Decot glasses in the past. They work well from a vision standpoint but are not safety rated. Knoblochs and Champion shooting glasses have the same problem. I believe that all shooters should use Z87 rated safety glasses while shooting.

Cort

Interesting topic! I'm a noob to the game and would like to learn more about BE specific shooting glasses. I wear bifocals and I'm beginning to believe I'm somewhat handicapped because of it. What should I be asking my eye Dr.? I will check out the references above but one question, does an Astigmatism factor in at all with any of you and can it be dealt with by using the lenses your referring to?

A proper prescription lens should take care of your astigmatism. The frame has little to do with astigmatism correction if it holds the lens correctly. I take a red dot scope with me to the optometrist's office so that he can adjust the astigmatism correction to give me a nice round red dot instead of a blob of some form. I think my current optometrist would be fine if I brought one of my pistols to his office but I just take the scope. I use my prescription safety glasses for other things besides shooting so I have the bifocal ground in. I had a set of iron sight lenses made one time. I did not have the bifocal in them but probably would today.

Cort

People who need eyeglasses often overlook one of the most important parts of shooting, good prescription eyeglasses. I've had good luck with my Randolph shooting glasses. They have prescription lenses. One pair has bifocals (the upper lens works well with the red dot). The other pair is for iron sights.

If you go by what all the old masters say,glasses that give you good sight is not what you need, the look you want is good sight picture but a blurred target. I know when using my prescription glasses, sometimes seeing the target clear is very distracting.

Proper shooting iron sight rx glasses, will have the rx tuned to allow your eyes to naturally focus at the distance where your front sight is. This is weaker than one's normal distance rx, so the bullseye becomes naturally fuzzier in appearance.

What I find one needs to watch out for, is if the shooting rx becomes too "weak", your front sight may look perfect, but the target may be so fuzzy that it may be difficult to figure out what the proper sight picture is.

Personally, I find a +1.00 adder (+1.00 weaker than my distance rx) gives me the best front sight look for a hardball 1911, but the bullseye becomes toooo fuzzy, so I find a +0.75 or +.50 for longer barrels the best compromise.

I have a astigmatism and with me Polycarbonate glasses (most shooting glasses are made out of this) makes mine worse. My eye doc told me those with an astigmatism should NOT wear Polycarbonate but rather a plastic lens or saftey glass.

Check with your doc/tech and see what they have to say.

Virgil

Virgil Kane wrote:I have a astigmatism and with me Polycarbonate glasses (most shooting glasses are made out of this) makes mine worse. My eye doc told me those with an astigmatism should NOT wear Polycarbonate but rather a plastic lens or saftey glass.

Check with your doc/tech and see what they have to say.

Virgil

Perhaps every eye is different but I have no problems with astigmatism (around -2.00 cyl for each eye) using a mid-index 1.57 polycarbonate lens. Never had my optometrist or ophthalmologist mention anything what your eyedoc said.

I'm going to take my Ultra-Dot to my appt in June. Whether I'm shooting irons or a dot, the target is always in focus unless I squint. It's actually easier for me to get the proper "look" with irons and my regular script glasses. Trying to focus on the dot and blur the target is darn near impossible. I'm glad this thread got started because I'm in need of some help as it relates to getting some good shooting glasses tailored to shooting BE.

Wingshot wrote:I'm going to take my Ultra-Dot to my appt in June. Whether I'm shooting irons or a dot, the target is always in focus unless I squint. It's actually easier for me to get the proper "look" with irons and my regular script glasses. Trying to focus on the dot and blur the target is darn near impossible. I'm glad this thread got started because I'm in need of some help as it relates to getting some good shooting glasses tailored to shooting BE.

A blurred target is only happening with iron sights as your eye can't focus at the near (front sight) and the far (bullseye) at the same time (ignoring the pinhole focusers). With a red dot, you can choose to focus on the target or focus on the red dot, either way, your normal distance eyeglass rx would usually apply.

With irons, unless your bullseye is bigger and closer to you than normal, if you're focusing on the front sight, the bullseye can't be in perfect focus at the same time.

My eye doctor is also a bullseye shooter. When I said I wanted glasses for shooting he knew exactly how to write the script for a pair of bifocals. In addition he noted that they would work well for computer work.

My 52 year old near-sighted eyes have tried red dot sights, and Merit iris suction cups. Both help. I'm chasing a distinguished pistol objective, and I told myself "no red dots until I earn my long leg." I hope I live long enough for that.

Anyway, one thing that has really helped me is setting up a pair of prescription glasses with my right lens (shooting, dominant eye, I'm right handed ) focused on the front sight. The left lens is set for normal ("far") distance. The focal point on my right lens is off to the right side of the lens (where I look through the lens with a right hand hold).

The results are that the front/rear sight are as sharp as a 15 year old eye-really amazing to me how good it is. The bullseye black is a little blurry, but really much better than I was expecting. I don't really care anyway, and it makes it (the bullseye) less of a distraction, and really permits me to focus on the front sight and sight alignment. I shoot a sort of sub six hold (low enough below the bottom of the black to the point that I no longer concern myself with looking at the bullseye-just the sights-if THAT helps describing how "deep" or "high" my sub-six hold is).

Anyway, it works for me. Just my input.

I have slight astigmatism. I got the go ahead from my ophthalmologist, who is a shooter, to use my prescription lenses. Yiogo

+1 on a good prescription that focuses on the front sight/ dot and blurs the target. 

According to J. Zurek, he uses this formula for Ball and Wad matches and it seems to work well. Hard to argue with those results.

My optometrist was alright with me toting my target gun into his office (cased, unloaded, EIC in place). He went to the range with me later and is now shooting with us. I think he saw a business opportunity, but 5 guns and two reloading presses later, I do not think it worked out as he anticipated. He did thank me for getting him into this before the Sandy Hook madness struck our sport.

You might look at Pilla glasses. They offer models with prescription inserts. Very high quality.

I've noticed that a couple of the contestants on History Channels "Top Shot", to include Brian Zins, have been wearing vermillion colored shooting glasses. Anyone have any experience with them?

I don't even know what vermillion is....

Rob Kovach wrote:I don't even know what vermillion is....

A vermillion is more than a trillion and less than a gazillion.

I have shooting glasses from REVISION Eye Wear.  The shooter's kit has 3 different lenses (clear, sunglass green, & yellow) that are military approved for impact.  They have a prescription glass holder that fits behind.  I have two prescription sets:  one with my right eye corrected for arms' length (iron sights) with the left corrected for distance;  the other with both corrected for distance (optic sights and shotgun).  I use which ever combination is appropriate for the situation.

Brian likes vermillion.    He talks about it at his clinic.  My experience with tuning a set of glasses for a prescription to see the front sight, was that it was a very expensive and temporary solution.  Within a couple of years, my vision had changed enough that I shot better looking through the top of my bifocals.  
       Remember the purpose of focusing on your front sight is to keep your eye from jumping from the sights to the target and back again, which will cause stringing of your shots.  
     Another way to make you focus on the irons is to use a sub six hold.  
     If I was primarily a precision Olympic style shooter, tuning a set of glasses would be a priority.    For LEG matches, better triggering will generally help your scores more.

So Vermillion shooting glasses are reddish/pinkish....so to shoot like Zins we need to see the target through rose colored glasses!