manual focus eye glasses for shooting

[seamaster]

https://www.adlens.com

[Gwhite]

The $30 ones look interesting. Cheap enough to give a try. I occasionally need shooting glasses to check something out when I coach, but it's rare enough that I don't feel like dragging my Champion Olympics along every time. I could also use them as reading glasses.

The $100 versions look like the fluid filled versions that sell for a lot more.

[Silvershooter]

Just bagged a pair of these on fleebay uk.

[Gwhite]

Well, I just got my "Adlens" glasses. In fact, I have been using them with the computer for about the last hour. The are light, relatively comfortable, and they pretty much work as advertised. I can crank both eyes from a reading mode out to a good distance focus. I normally wear contact lenses set up as "monovision", which means my left eye is corrected for reading, and my right eye is set up for distance. With these, I can move my computer focus on the left out out a tiny bit, and bring the focus on my right eye in to the monitor distance.

That's the good news. They are not perfect. Because they use an overlapping lens technology, the fully corrected region is a bit small, so looking through anything but the middle region of the lenses gives you some distortion. That means that you can't shoot with your head at much of an angle, although if you adjust the lens with your head rotated the way you shoot, you can compensate for it a bit.

The frames are a bit flexible, and I imagine they could be easily broken. The lenses are polycarbonate, so they should have good impact resistance, but they are too small to be as effective as real safety glasses with large lenses & wrap around sides. They still would provide more protection than typical Knoblochs or Olympics. They aren't my idea of stylish, but again, neither are regular shooting glasses. The brow bar looks a bit heavy, because is houses all the adjusting hardware.

I tried looking at my air pistol sights, and I can easily adjust the focus back & forth. It's a little difficult to figure out exactly where to set them, so I parked the muzzle of my pistol on a row of books in a bookcase, and then adjusted the focus so I could read all the titles well. My regular shooting glasses have an adjustable aperture. I use the Adlens glasses straight, I don't have any control over depth of field, and my rear sights are a bit blurrier than I'm used to.

I shot a little bit, and immediately discovered the issue with my head being rotated. Once I re-dialed to adjust for my head position, I shot a 9 followed by 5 tens. That's certainly as good as (or better than) I do normally, so it clearly wasn't interfering with my shooting too much.

When you adjust them, both the front & rear lenses move so the focusing area stays in the middle. Attaching an aperture to the lens would be a problem if you want to be able to make fine adjustment. It would have to be clipped to the frame somehow.

All in all, I'm impressed, especially for the price. I'll need to experiment with them a lot more before I decide to replace my Olympics. I think the important thing for me is figuring out how to add an aperture. In the meantime, I have a good pair of computer glasses, emergency glasses, etc. for relatively short $$$.

[Silvershooter]

Attaching an aperture to the lens would be a problem if you want to be able to make fine adjustment. It would have to be clipped to the frame somehow.

Mine arrived Saturday and have been playing around with them while dry firing. I tried the stick on Eyepal aperture, but could not get it to work without distortion, it may not have been centered correctly.
One benefit is the ability to adjust the focus as the eye changes during a match.
Looking forward to trying them at the club on Monday.

[Gwhite]

Even though I shoot with about a 45 degree stance, the issue with head position takes some tweaking. People that shoot with their feet in line with their arm presumably look at more of an angle than I do, and may find that presents a serious issue with these glasses. One big selling point of "real" shooting glasses is that you can park the lenses almost anywhere, and rotate it to suit any head position.

What I found initially was that I could get a clearer sight picture if I twisted my head to look more straight through the lens. I then started tweaking the setting until I could see OK at a more natural head position.

I looked into apertures. Many use a suction cup, which won't work. Gehmann has these:



but they are expensive, and it doesn't look like you have a lot of options for getting it in the right location. I've been thinking about replacing the lens in one of these with a fixed aperture, basically a black disk with a hole:



Amazon sells this one for $3. You could also mount a variable aperture on the same glasses clip, but all the variable apertures I found cost two to three times what the glasses do. There are some apertures that just consist of a wheel with several sized holes, and it might be possible to make one of those fairly easily:



Given the adjustability of the loupe mount, a black disk with several sized holes might work. You would just position it with the hole that works best for the lighting conditions.

[Wile E Coyote]

I looked into apertures. Many use a suction cup, which won't work. Gehmann has these:



but they are expensive, and it doesn't look like you have a lot of options for getting it in the right location. I've been thinking about replacing the lens in one of these with a fixed aperture, basically a black disk with a hole:

The entire iris mechanism moves around the large black disk to allow positioning of the aperture.

[slofyr]

.....



Amazon sells this one for $3.......

Using the square block and horizontal wire from that Amazon loupe, a Merit aperture can be adapted to a Behr loupe frame. The mount fits either side of the glasses without modification. Aperture is adjustable up/down and right/left to compensate for stance and head angle. The unit pivots up when not needed.

http://www.behrloupes.com/index.html
http://www.meritcorporation.com/products.html


This one has been in use for ten years....

[Gwhite]

Nice setup. I especially like the knobs you installed. I'm sure the Behr loupe mount is a lot more secure than the $3 clip version.

The catch is the growing expense. I've been hoping to come up with something well under $50 the students on my team could easily afford.

The Behr loupe is ~ $38, and the Merit aperture is ~ $50. Throw in the Adlens glasses for $30, and you are close to $120. That isn't quite approaching the cost of "real" shooting glasses, but it's getting up there....

[seamaster]

Doug,

Do you still need the iris, even if you can manually focus the clear front sight?

Are you trying to manually make your front sight "slightly" off focus and use iris to increase depth to get the that super clear front sight?

If you can "manually" focus on the front sight, why iris addition? I can understand if you have a fixed focus diopter lens that you are not quite sure, you can use iris to make sure that front sight is truly focused. But with "manual" lens focus, you are sure whether front sight is in best focus.

So why the iris addition?

[slofyr]

I'll add this about the iris/aperture. Other than enhancing edge sharpness of the front post, I find it quite useful for controlling light. At my outdoor range, when the sun moves over the trees targets become uncomfortably bright. Stopping down the aperture dims the reflection and glare, similar to polarized sun glasses.

[Gwhite]

Do you still need the iris, even if you can manually focus the clear front sight?

Are you trying to manually make your front sight "slightly" off focus and use iris to increase depth to get the that super clear front sight?

If you can "manually" focus on the front sight, why iris addition? I can understand if you have a fixed focus diopter lens that you are not quite sure, you can use iris to make sure that front sight is truly focused. But with "manual" lens focus, you are sure whether front sight is in best focus.

So why the iris addition?

It depends on the lighting. In my basement & many indoor ranges, it's dim enough that with my focus on the front sight, my rear sight is VERY blurry. I can aim side to side pretty well, because it's symmetrical. However, I get vertical variations because I don't quite know where the top of the rear sight is to line it up with the front sight.

Using an aperture to slightly increase my depth of field takes care of this issue.

[Silvershooter]

Re Adlens
Last night first few shots were fine, but then I found the reflected light was very distracting. Tried an Eyepal on the lens that helped some. I was trying to use my non dominant right eye which has had cataract surgery, will have to go back to using my left.