TargetTalk

Hi

Anyone with experience of cataract ops ?

I had a cataract op on my right non dominant eye in September last year. Previously I used my left to aim.

2 questions

1 Does it take some time to become accustomed to using a different, in this case (non dominant) eye.
2 Dry firing against a wall I have a clear sight picture, but on the range I am more affected by the lighting - Is this a known problem with a cataract implant (single focus type) ? ( I have the correct prescription lens).

About the dominant eye I can say, I'm left eye dominant but I shoot with my right eye (and right arm)! After my first week of shoting with my left eye, I got a pain in the neck, so I changed! Easy as hell!

when I practice dynamic shooting, with both eyes opened and two hands, I use the left eye! And I focus on the target...
So dynamic shooting for me is the antitheses of bull's eye shooting (ISSF or any other event)!

I had the same surgery in both eyes some years ago. What little I shot before then, I shot with my left eye thinking that I had contralateral eye dominance, but it turns out that the cataract was worse in my right eye and I naturally responded by using the eye with the clearer image. I use my right eye now and frankly I think the whole "dominant eye" thing is a bit overblown for those shooting sports in which the off eye is occluded. Obviously, action shooting and shotgun are different if you keep both eyes open because your brain naturally defaults to the dominant eye's image. YMMV, of course.

Lighting conditions will affect your pupil size and that will affect your depth of field. Since you have non-accommodating lens implants, you probably have pretty good distance vision but need correction for middle and close viewing. This means that your eye needs to be corrected to the distance to the front sight for it to be clear. There is a range of distance for which your vision will be clear with a particular correction and that is the "depth of field". When your pupils are small, i.e., light is bright, the depth of field will increase, and when the pupils are large it will decrease. (This works just like the f-stop on a camera, if you are familiar with that.) If you are dry firing against a light colored wall in a normally lit room and then shoot at an indoor range where the shooting line is less well lit than the target, that could explain the difference. And noting that you are in the North of England, I would guess that you use an indoor range and even an outdoor one would not always be terribly bright.

I couldn't get a corrective lens for my shooting glasses that was precisely the prescription I needed - it was somewhere between commonly available strengths. This was not much of a problem when dry firing, but was a problem at the indoor range I use. Mounting an iris to my shooting glasses definitely helped, since stopping down the iris has the same effect on depth of field as reducing the pupil size. It's not a perfect solution - it adds to the weight of the glasses and dims the image - but you might want to try it.

Roger

Thanks for your replies.

Yes the target areas on the ranges (all indoor) I shoot seem to be very bright which seems to blur the sights and my attention gets drawn to the target. I have tried an Eyepal aperture but that increases the depth of field too much, my shooting lens is quite strong at +1.25 dioptres.
Any way I will persist with it, now getting more used to right eye aiming and shooting.Left eye aiming was becoming too uncomfortable.
Dave