Vision Commentary from Maltzie

Vision, just as important as equipment, form, and the mental aspect in shooting.

Here are some interesting points of information regarding vision. Your quality of vision and Rx changes through out the day. Changes with what and when you eat. With stress or fatigue, high or low blood pressure, and blood sugar.

Your favorite eye doctor has an industry gimmick that is advantaged at every opportunity or visit to the clinic. Your eye poker tests your vision on lab equipment in a relaxed environment, gives you choices or optical setting during the test that are in a controlled setting. Your eyes are relaxed and the test is to find what optical settings are most clear or more clear based on relaxing focus muscles in your eye. Probably the only time you completely relax focus muscles during the day. Your eyes will inherently try to focus all of the time, even through an old prescription or without a correction. If your buying new glasses every 2 years, based on the above noted eye test you could be buying sooner than truly needed. The doc is making your eye focus muscles weaker with every new prescription just based on allowing you to see clearly without your eye making an effort to clear vision.

The eye doctor will find what Rx is best for you at any given appointment and then one of his staff will measure your pupil distance (PD). This is the distance each pupil center is from the center of your nose. Very important to you and the lab that manufactures your lenses. The optical lab needs to center the ground optic into the lens your eyes and face. Its only the very center of the optic that you see clearly through. You can prove that by moving your present glasses around on your face. The stronger the Rx, the easier or more obvious it will be. For someone like me, that makes shooting and street framed glasses for clients, getting the PD centered is the difference between customers liking the product or not.

Offsetting the optic center for shooting. 3 to 6 MM left or right based on left or right hand shooting. If you tend to look closer the left side of the lens (right hand shooter) of your glasses, while mounted and looking down the rib you are not looking through the optic center. Your vision is less clear than possible. Some customers aware of the offset advantage will request an offset when ordering lenses. What they do not expect is the glasses will not be as comfortable to look through, anytime other than while looking down the rib. Again, the user is not looking through the optic center while using this shooting frame for the street. If your like me, I put on my glasses when I get to the range and wear them all day, offsetting is uncomfortable for normal use. I have made shooting glasses for myself that are offset 6 MM left and they never get used. I also require a somewhat strong Rx.

I almost hate to bring the subject of "color" up, but every shooter puts great value on color selection. The shooting frame industry has made it easier by having few colors available in light, medium and dark, but if you ever looked at an industry color chart you would see over 1000 variations, and be even more confused. So lets review what is important in choosing a color. The most important fact is, the guy manufacturing your shooting glasses can’t see through your eyes. Has no clue of what your eyes light sensitivity is, and I’m convinced that we see color differently from one shooter to another. There are some truisms in color like yellow or gold will tend to brighten the day for most all shooters. Any color that has orange in the mix tends to accent orange. That accent can be perceived as white or iridescent by different shooters. But..... the effect of light in eye comfort and accenting is relative to perceived background contrast. For my way of thinking the accent is as important as what happens to the background. The bigger the contrast the better the visual acquisition. For me, on a bright sunny day, shooting orange dome targets, vermillion brings out the contrast. In the color mix, the ruby red tends to naturalize the background, even darken it and the orange accents the target orange almost making it an iridescent lighter shade of orange. The next guy will tell me that vermillion makes the orange on the target appear white. There may be a perfect color for you, but few shooting lens providers will offer colors other than traditional shooting colors. To my way of thinking, it doesn’t take a large color selection, but the light, medium and dark option an important decision.

If you decide to use a gas coating on your lenses for anti reflection, also note that before the lenses hit the gas chamber they experience 2 washes, one of which is aggressive and will tend to wash some of the color dip out, making the end product lighter than expected. Polarized lenses use a filter impregnation in the lens blank itself, compared to looking through window blinds. Designed to take reflections off of what you are looking at (example water). No target has ever had a surface reflection. Anti-reflective coating are available for your lenses. A spray on type that scratches easily, and a heat & gas coating making the lens material clearer and harder, easier to clean. Both will take reflections off of your lenses. This is the shooters goal. Polar lenses add $100.00 in cost and restrict/filter your vision. Transitional lenses add $100.00 to the cost and get too dark for most shooters. Gray and bronze are the only colors available. AR takes reflection off of your glasses. Know what your paying for and make better decisions.

Thinking and vision is misunderstood by many. Some words used in trapshooting are confusing, like "concentration". Lets all understand that you CAN NOT focus in thought and see clearly at the same time. You need to commit to one or the other. Staying in-between only diminishes both. What I call a "transition" from thinking to vision is what we must do every shot. We think through the last target, form and mount and must switch our focus from the thinking to seeing. The better or more complete the switch the better the scores. If you have taken the time to watch exceptionally good trapshooters, note the pause they make before they call for the target. They mount the gun and point it at their favorite starting point, they stop all gun movement and pause. That pause is to switch to vision. Mind is in neutral, eyes engaged, this transformation is said to be "in the present" The target is called for and the eye(s) acquire clear vision/focus on the target. The rest is a trained subconscious response. If the gun is locked into your mount and you move from the body, it will follow your gaze naturally. Your skill level is the average of how often you perform this task well.

Every time you lose a target and say to your self,"I wasn’t ready for that one", you didn’t completely switch from thinking and engage your vision. The target caught you by some surprise because you had not completely committed to vision and remained somewhere in-between as the target was called for. The transition was on the fly, based on the emergency of the target in flight. Try to stay in the present both during the thinking part and the vision part. Drift off or in-between and loose targets. Part of the mental side of the game. A subject of another overview, that many books have been written about.

Its my theory that we address the different important aspects of your shooting as we make more commitment to the sport. Using vision is a basic fundamental. Seeing the target better is a purchase or equipment. Just like starting out in trapshooting using a field grade gun, promo ammo, and street glasses, there is a better approach, but it costs money and we prioritize our shooting budgets every time to the range. The cost can be significant for equipment, but safety and clear vision should be at the top of the list of potential options. We tend to dwell on the guns, chokes and loads as most important. Although, quality and proper vision can be regarded as the easily forgotten or obscure advantage.

--Maltzie