'Father Time' is finally catching up with me. I'm 62 and around a year ago found out that I needed bi-focal glasses. I'd been using reading glasses for 20yrs. I'm having a heck of a time adjusting, both scope and binocs. in fact today I noticed that my scopes seemed to be foggier with the glasses than without. Any thoughts about the fogginess or sugestions on shooting with glasses would be appreciated. thanks, capt david

You may need to refocus your eye piece back to near netural. Point it to the sky and turn the eye piece until the reticle is very sharp. That is one reason I really like the European fast focus eye piece better than the American style focus.

Yeah, tends to creep up on us all... I seem to need an endless supply of different glasses these days, one for reading, one for far away, one looking at my computer screen... You name it. I can appreciate the desire to consolidate the confusion a bit.

There will likely be people here with more personal experience than mine. But I'm a bit doubtful about bi-focals when shooting/hunting. Very practical when you need to look at both targets at 100 yds, and the teeny-weeny dials to adjust your scope, say. But it is never good to look through optics (such as a scope) if there is a chance of an optical "jump" involved. This could be the bi-focal optical jump, or it can even be from optical adjustment through your glasses to none outside. A friend had to have a pair of glasses made up, which covered an area from well below to well above his eye, to minimize the risk of inadvertently and unknowingly suffering such a "jump" when looking through the scope. Only one magnification, dial adjustments may have to be done with another set of glasses...

Other than that, I agree with army aviator. With new glasses, you'll likely have to reset the diopter adjustment of your scopes/binocs.

- mike

Thanks, and keep 'em comming. At this point I'm taking them off when I shoot. I mainly hunt from blinds, so maybe I can get by with this. capr david

Capt david, I'm just a little confused, I mean no disrespect but I'm thinking you mean fuzzy, blured, not foggie that would be dirty lens. I wear trifocals and some of my friends wear bifocals. I have something for you to try, some of my friends have bi or trifocals and their eye doc postioned their bi or trifocals to close to center of their lens giving them problems seeing by not moving their head instead of their eyes. Meaning to look down they have to move their head and not their eyes. Your bifocals may be adjusted wrong or wrong for shooting ,with your bino's or scope, look through one or the other and try moving your glasses lower on your nose and see what happens or try raising your glasses on your nose and see if this helps. That will let you know if you need your bifocals to shoot or not or if their the problem.I'm not saying this is the answer but something to try or ruleout. If you have a newer scope then there is a diopter adjustment on the eyepiece to correct the fuzziness, older scopes don't have this feature. I know a few people with your problem or one like it and their eyeglasses were the problem. Hope this helps.

Bifocals are like a light-OFF or On--no in between. Get progressive (no line) and they are infinitly variable by the tilt of your head. I can shoot with them on, but take them off when using binoculars.

+1 for progressive lenses. They make shooting, and all facets of life easier for those who need vision assistance.

Progressive lenses are the way to go. They make life so much easier.

Mike

Hey guys,

This thread is so timely for myself. I wear glasses with progressive lenses & enjoy them. I don't use them for shooting with a scope with no problems.

I am considering using iron sights (u notch & front bead) on my next plains game hunt. On the African Hunting forum there is currently a thread on using iron sights for hunting. A slight majority of the responders say use your iron sights - with the understanding you practice and know your limitations.

I've begun to practice & feel confident about using iron sights for a real hunt. My current progressive lenses are marginal as far as using iron sights (good enough for taking my own sweet time at taking the shot at paper).

MY QUESTION IS ARE "PREMIUM PROGRESSIVE" LENSES ANY BETTER (FOR THOSE THAT MIGHT KNOW)?

Boltshooter:

If by "iron sights" you mean open sights, then you (and me and everyone else who's had a few birthdays past 40) have a real challenge.

Older eyes have much more difficulty focusing simultanously at different distances. Open sights require your eye to simultaneously see (reasonably well) THREE different distances: The very close rear sight, the more distant front sight, and the very distant target. NO type of vision correction can help you adjust to the three very different focal lengths simultaneously; in fact, nearly any correction will make two of them worse.

Aperture sights are a bit easier to use in that you don't actualy focus on the very close rear aperture -- you just look through it and place the front sight in the opening. Curiously, the aperture works like the F-stop on a camera and the smaller the aperture the greater your depth of focus, therefore it is actually easier to see both the front sight and the target simultaneously and both in fairly good focus. Don't believe me? If you're a bit nearsighted, just peep through an aperture sight and see how the door handle across the street suddenly jumps into better focus!

Many people don't understand aperture sights. Once you have used them you will find them both faster and more precise than open sights. But in terms of speed, a scope (of sufficiently wide field of view and eye placement) is always faster than any kind of iron sight simply because it has only ONE focal distance.

I certainly wouldn't discourage you from using open sights on an African (or any other) hunt. Just know your limitations and have plenty of practice with open sights before you go. After all, for several centuries open sights were all that was available to African hunters and most of them (well, many of them) survived the experience.

I don't know if they're considered premium, but I find the Crizal(sp) progressive lenses to be way better than most. They're very scratch resistant and they eliminate almost all the distortion when you look out of the corner of your eye, without turning your head.

Mike