Turning 67 and eye health for Irons, BTW several Bourbons does not seem to help with this... very unfortunate.

Well, I am turning 67 this year and I must admit that the sight picture with iron sights is not what it used to be. I still enjoy shooting air pistol but sense the end may be nearer than I would like to admit. I have very good vision  without glasses, 20 15 with just a very slight astigmatism in my shooting eye. I use a +.75 lens with the astigmatism correction for shooting irons. However, my shooting eye fatigues much quicker, the front sight is sharply in focus but the black bull fades and blurs much more than it use to. I understand this is "how it is" as ones youth begins to fade. I have tried more Bourbon, but this does not help. I saw a new product that seemed to help with the problem...  

https://www.vuity.com/?cid=ppc-ggl-vuity_brand-vuity_eye_drops-general-exact-uspby210260&gclid=Cj0KCQiA2sqOBhCGARIsAPuPK0i_CNUUfuMhrnJfrQ1uq4SMNqalAcNEPmUsAr0Uybog1Mp6ktZfbQYaAqLQEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

https://www.webmd.com/eye-health/news/20211214/fda-approved-eyedrops-close-up-vision

But, it indicates that it does not work as well for those of us over 65 years of age

SO! what, if anything, can be done to keep what I have or even improve?

Approaching 63 here. Astigmatism set in around 48 years old. I use Visene drops before a match to get rid of "floaters".

It might be time to try a red dot sight.

Get to a good optometrist who understands pistol shooting and discuss your options.

At 64, l feel your pain. I would suggest finding Dr Norman Wong's articles on eyes. I'm using .5 diopter on top of prescription short focus lens so perhaps your .75 is too strong?

Never had a lot of sympathy for you guys with "good" vision."    The best uncorrected vision I ever remember having was 20/200.  Even when young the front sight could be hard to see on ranges with low overhangs.  Shot 2600 with iron sights when I was 33.  Went to optics as soon as allowed.  Still had to shoot irons for Service Pistol and EIC matches and pretty much shot master scores with them.  Personally think that the real trick is to really focus on the front sight.  Not just see the front sight but focus on it.  We'd black our front sights and then paint a small while dot on the front with typewriter correction fluid.  A shooting team buddy who did have good vision would then take a sharpened lead pencil and make a tiny dot in the middle of the white.

I have to wait for the floaters, aka squid or garbage bags, to pass by within the period of good hold....

Pinetree wrote:Approaching 63 here. Astigmatism set in around 48 years old. I use Visene drops before a match to get rid of "floaters".

It might be time to try a red dot sight.

No amount of external lubrication gets rid of floaters. Floaters are inside the eyeball gel (vitreous humor). Floaters are detritus material that has sloughed off the internal eyeball and is suspended in the gel. Age can increase floaters. I can recall having some in the 3rd grade.


I have discussed this at length with my optometrist who is shooter friendly.


What you may have are corneal growths (pterygium). Lubrication can reduced the occlusion created my the growths and the vison impact.


You may think that the Visene is reducing the floaters, but it is case of mind over matter.


There was a a research paper a few decades ago that followed the process of draining the eye ball gel, filtering out the floater material and reinjecting the gel back into the subject.


A problem was that the retina would collapse when the get was removed. Experimenters then used saline to keep the retina from collapsing. They only used volunteers with very heavy floater occlusion.


The end result was not optimal. Yes floaters were reduced some but there was degradation in overall visual function. 


The research ended and no further attempt has been made to eliminate/reduce floaters. IIRC

Well dang.

Those looking for Dr. Wong's articles can find them at:

Dr. Norman Wong Articles as posted to the Bullseye List (plus*)

The very first thing to look for there:

BULLSEYE SHOOTERS' GUIDE FOR THE EYECARE PROFESSIONAL

which was written as information for your eye care provider, to help with pointing out our vision needs.

One of the causes of eye fatigue, especially as we age, is focal distance.  If your focus fades away quickly while shooting, you are probably not optically focused at your resting point.  Sometimes this can be hard to determine, but if you can adjust lenses and irises, etc. such that your resting focus is at the front sight, you will be able to hold that focus for much longer.  My norm is to use lenses to find the resting focus and then an iris to increase the depth.  In actuality, the depth alone may help, but the resting focus should be addressed.

Wobbley wrote:Get to a good optometrist who understands pistol shooting and discuss your options.

Good optometrist is a rarity. Ones that understands shooting - endangered species. Overlap - Rare Endangered Species. 
If somebody knows one in WA, please let me know...

I have a very good optometrist who let's me bring my guns into the exam room. She enjoys the challenge and listens while we work out the best sight pictures. She did the calculations and +.75 is correct for iron sights. She mentioned the new eye drops and would provide a script for me. I think I will give it a try. I currently use an Iris for Irons, the depth of field improves. I guess I need to make sure I am not looking down range and back again but remained focused on the front sight.

You don't typically need an optometrist to understand shooting irons, as long as you can get a good distance prescription that has your eyes relaxed.

Your correct shooting prescription will then be one of two lens powers: typically, it is +0.75 diopters added to your distance vision.  However if you have good light, either a very well lit range, or you are shooting outdoors, and you can use an aperture, like an eyepal, or a Merit disk, you can go to +1.00 added to your distance vision.

The result will e that the relaxed focal point of your eye will be close enough to your ideal focal spot for shooting that your eye muscle does not need to do any work, and eye fatigue or fading is no longer an issue.

Naturally, there are medical issues that go beyond simple focal correction that DO need an optometrist or ophthalmologist, but one of those two adds will solve many eye related issues.

shootingsight wrote:Your correct shooting prescription will then be one of two lens powers: typically, it is +0.75 diopters added to your distance vision.  However if you have good light, either a very well lit range, or you are shooting outdoors, and you can use an aperture, like an eyepal, or a Merit disk, you can go to +1.00 added to your distance vision.

I am wondering, why +0.75 is recommended. Distance from my eye to the front site is ~ 1m, per diopter formula it should be +1.00.
+0.75 focuses at 1.33m, well beyond front site. It may make target a little sharper, but for aging eyes adds a good amount of blur to the rear site, which gives much more problems.

What am I missing?

Your goal is not to focus ON the front sight.  If you do, for one, the target will be too blurry, for another, the part of your depth of field that falls on the near side of your focal point is wasted.

Your real goal is to focus at the hyperfocal distance of the sight, where your depth of field is centered between the sight and the target.  I run the math for pistol so the DoF is centered between the rear sight and the target, leaving the front sight slightly sharper than the target.  By chance, the hyperfocal distance is exactly 2x the distance to the near object.  For most people, rear sight is about 24" from my eye, so I want to focus at 48", which is 1.22 meters, requiring a theoretical 0.82 diopters.  Since your eye can add power, but not subtract, you round the 0.82 down to 0.75.

If you have really bright light, so you can get away with a small 0.060 or smaller aperture, the target is so sharp that some pistol shooters can get up to a +1.00 lens for ultra sharp sights still with acceptably sharp target.

Interesting concept in opposition to every established norm!

For precision pistol, the front sight should always be in complete, clear focus.

I supplied lenses to the MIT pistol team using +0.75 added to their distance prescription, and they won the National Championship.  Can't say it was because of my lenses, but it certainly did not hurt.

As a side note, I did not make clear: I am talking adding +0.75 to any distance correction you need.  If you have perfect relaxed 20/20 vision, it is just a +0.75 diopter lens, but even if you need mild correction for distance, you want to make sure this is added into the final lens power you should be shooting with.

If anyone is up at Camp Perry, I'm on vendor's row 1022A, and I have all the test lenses and apertures up here, so you can try different combinations and see what works best.

Note that this thread is/was about aging eyes, and I expect MIT team was probably not too old
+/- 0.25 is not a big deal for young people (even with not ideal vision); going older, we need as much help as possible to focus on what is important (front sight).  
And I pretty strongly believe that anybody who thinks that target sharpness is important should forget about irons

Agree, you do not want target sharpness, which is why I base the math on splitting depth of field between the rear sight and the target, so the front sight is sharper than the target or the rear sight.

Young eyes and old eyes need to see the same image.  Young eyes can do it by exerting the ciliary muscle to distort the lens of the eye.  Old eyes lose the flexibility of the lens, so they cannot do it internally, they need lenses.  It turns out that a lens is also good for young eyes, because while they will produce the same image, if the lens is doing the work, the eye muscle gets to stay relaxed.  Forming a sight picture that is based on you flexing a muscle and then telling it to hold still in the flexxed position while you aim is not as stable as if you can form that same image with a relaxed muscle.

You can do this experiment yourself: my front sight is very close to 30" from my eye (24" to the rear sight, plus a 6" sight radius).  That is 0.76 meters, and requires a 1/0.76 = 1.31 diopter to see perfectly.  Go to any drug store and pick up a pair of +1.25 readers, which are not even as powerful, and try to shoot with them.  What you will find is that the target is much too blurry.