I am not new to shooting, but new to 10M pistol. For my home defense and carry guns I am good enough to point and shoot. Getting a sight picture in a self defense situation really isn't important. But in 10M air pistol, it's everything. My problem is that I have better than 20/20 vision in my dominant left eye, but poorer vision in my right eye. I am a righthanded shooter. I have tried various methods (including Eyepal) to shoot with my right eye, but nothing comes close to using my left eye and simple adjusting my stance and set up a bit. It's all in the results, right? Surely, there are and have been world class shooters out there who have shot with a cross eye dominance.... Any comments?
ALSO, is there a straightforward philosophy about pellet weight at 10M? Or is it simply a matter of experimenting to learn which pellets are best for your gun?
Thanks to all.
eye dominance
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citygirlinthesouth
- Posts: 5
- Joined: Wed Aug 07, 2013 4:02 pm
- Location: Louisiana
eye dominance
Paula
There is nothing wrong with cross eye dominance. You will probably have to open your stance a little, especially at first, as the muscles in the neck will tend to pull your upper body and arm if you try a straight 90 degree stance. Another thing to try, is to put your non shooting hand into your waistband at your hip or slightly behind you. This will tend to pull the upper body the opposite direction as the neck muscles, allowing a straighter stance. Just remember that anything unorthodox, doesn't really matter, as long as you can repeat it consistently over and over again.
As for pellet weight and testing, you can do a search on this site and see that it has been covered to death. Basically, any good pellet will stay within the 10 ring. So until you can shoot all 10's, you won't be able to discern any difference.
As for pellet weight and testing, you can do a search on this site and see that it has been covered to death. Basically, any good pellet will stay within the 10 ring. So until you can shoot all 10's, you won't be able to discern any difference.
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brent375hh
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*She. Get some reading glasses. (Rover, not citygirlinthesouth)Rover wrote:He didn't say he was cross eye dominant. He said his vision was better in his left eye.
Get some shooting glasses and shoot RWS Basic pellets!
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Whatever you do, if you get shooting glasses you'll want to have your focal distance at 1 meter or more (or whatever it is in your case that brings your front sight into crisp focus). That topic that has been covered recently in this forum (see posts by Art, for example, who goes by ShootingSight on this forum).
jr
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brent375hh
- Posts: 742
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- Location: Minneapolis
Paula,
Try taking a scrap of paper and punching a very small hole in it. Attach this to your glasses and look at your sights through that hole. If the results are sharp enough, you can buy a Gehmann clip on iris to do the same thing much better. It might save you neck strain, and if you also shoot long guns it might be less confusing to your brain when shooting them as well.
Try taking a scrap of paper and punching a very small hole in it. Attach this to your glasses and look at your sights through that hole. If the results are sharp enough, you can buy a Gehmann clip on iris to do the same thing much better. It might save you neck strain, and if you also shoot long guns it might be less confusing to your brain when shooting them as well.
Rover:
As said, there is nothing wrong with being cross eye dominant, all you have to do is find a stance that feels "natural" and that is repeatable. This last part is the real important one, you should be able to get in and out of position as many times as you like without change.
As for the pellets, for air pistol any decent pellet will do. You should expect a group shot from a clamped gun (styer, morini, pardini, FWB, walter, etc.) to be no larger than 8mm left to right, top to bottom (not center to center!). Because the size of the ten ring is 11mm, you can see that the group stays well in.
Hope this helps
SHE saidRover wrote:He didn't say he was cross eye dominant. He said his vision was better in his left eye.
citygirlinthesouth:citygirlinthesouth wrote:My problem is that I have better than 20/20 vision in my dominant left eye, but poorer vision in my right eye. I am a righthanded shooter.
As said, there is nothing wrong with being cross eye dominant, all you have to do is find a stance that feels "natural" and that is repeatable. This last part is the real important one, you should be able to get in and out of position as many times as you like without change.
As for the pellets, for air pistol any decent pellet will do. You should expect a group shot from a clamped gun (styer, morini, pardini, FWB, walter, etc.) to be no larger than 8mm left to right, top to bottom (not center to center!). Because the size of the ten ring is 11mm, you can see that the group stays well in.
Hope this helps
If your left eye is better than your right, that means you need prescription. Cross sight shooting always has its limit, and I have yet to see anyone who reach a world class level with that. Too many factors.
The person who taught me to shoot thought it was OK, but subsequently all the world class shooters that I talked or corresponded with disagreed.
Either you shoot left handed, which I presume you have to do weight training for your left hand, and take advantage of the better eye; or right handed, then you need a prescription for shooting glasses. Remember you don't have to be super sharp to the point of seeing the target crystal clear, but you need to be able to see the front sight clear, since the target will become blurry once you start precision aiming.
I don't use prescription glasses, but I use lenses that is +1.5 on my shooting glass. Make sure BOTH lenses are the same, even if you plan to either use a blinder, or close your left eye.
I shoot pistol right handed, but my dominant eye is left, so when I shoot long arm (very very rare) I shoot left handed and take full advantage of my better eye because the sight radius is so much longer. In fact, I find it difficult to shoot right handed on a long arm after that, since I do not like to wear fancy shooting glasses if I can help it.
I am sure there are better veterans here that can give you better answer, but as a noob myself, that was what I have experience so far in my 13 months of (my entire) shooting life.
The person who taught me to shoot thought it was OK, but subsequently all the world class shooters that I talked or corresponded with disagreed.
Either you shoot left handed, which I presume you have to do weight training for your left hand, and take advantage of the better eye; or right handed, then you need a prescription for shooting glasses. Remember you don't have to be super sharp to the point of seeing the target crystal clear, but you need to be able to see the front sight clear, since the target will become blurry once you start precision aiming.
I don't use prescription glasses, but I use lenses that is +1.5 on my shooting glass. Make sure BOTH lenses are the same, even if you plan to either use a blinder, or close your left eye.
I shoot pistol right handed, but my dominant eye is left, so when I shoot long arm (very very rare) I shoot left handed and take full advantage of my better eye because the sight radius is so much longer. In fact, I find it difficult to shoot right handed on a long arm after that, since I do not like to wear fancy shooting glasses if I can help it.
I am sure there are better veterans here that can give you better answer, but as a noob myself, that was what I have experience so far in my 13 months of (my entire) shooting life.
As for pellets, it has been covered to death, and if you use the search function you probably will spend an entire month reading the threads.
I have my own ideas, but I'd rather use the consensus recommendation:
Just buy ANY brand that is designed for ISSF air pistol/rifle competition will do, even if it is the lowest grade. Wadcutter or "Diabolo" only.
There are many brands, RWS, JSB, Qiang Yuan, H&N & Vogel. These are the brands that are used in major competition. Just buy the lowest grade will do. The easiest good quality brand and grade to find in a sports store in the USA is RWS Basic. Caliber is of course 4.5mm, but Head size does not matter (4.48mm-4.51mm), just stick with 4.5mm will do; but if you come across a different head size (4.48mm) that someone wants to sell you for cheap, take it anyway, it won't make a difference. The target test paper that indicate the brand, grade and head size that sometimes come with your pistol is in no way a reflection of what the pistol really like. Factory workers merely have cans of a particular brand with a particular head size and they use it for testing. If the "grouping" is acceptable, it passes the Quality Control and is ready to be sold. IIRC the target pellet hole was a five shot test, and they will keep on doing it until it is satisfactory.
Gamo and Crossman are not one of the brands you want, they are into the business of making plinking and hunting pellets.
I don't know about Beeman, since even when Beeman was selling the FWB, they recommended H&N, and now that Beeman is owned by a Chinese company with zero customer service and laid off everyone, I have no idea about its quality. The company merely wants to squeeze as much profit as possible. Don't quote me on it, I got this from Dr. Beeman himself. My recommendation is to not buy Beeman, even though it DID have a history for AP/AR competition.
In our household we use RWS R-10, RWS Meisterkugeln, Qiang Yuan Match, and H&N Final. Frankly if we all use Qiang Yuan Match (the lowest grade of the three) it won't make a difference.
It seems to me that JSB diabolo is the universal choice for people who use air rifle that shoots 100-200 yards and beyond, and even that they have to go through individual pellet and hand picked them. I presume that means JSB (which is also the most expensive brand) is the best to these guys. But we are dealing with 10m, not 200 yards. So again, it does not matter.
Quality control of the competitive brands have reach a point that there is little need to have a seater and a shaper for the skirt. Again the only people I see using the tool are the one who shoot 200-300 yards.
As for batch testing and stuff, search function will come up with lots of answers.
I have my own ideas, but I'd rather use the consensus recommendation:
Just buy ANY brand that is designed for ISSF air pistol/rifle competition will do, even if it is the lowest grade. Wadcutter or "Diabolo" only.
There are many brands, RWS, JSB, Qiang Yuan, H&N & Vogel. These are the brands that are used in major competition. Just buy the lowest grade will do. The easiest good quality brand and grade to find in a sports store in the USA is RWS Basic. Caliber is of course 4.5mm, but Head size does not matter (4.48mm-4.51mm), just stick with 4.5mm will do; but if you come across a different head size (4.48mm) that someone wants to sell you for cheap, take it anyway, it won't make a difference. The target test paper that indicate the brand, grade and head size that sometimes come with your pistol is in no way a reflection of what the pistol really like. Factory workers merely have cans of a particular brand with a particular head size and they use it for testing. If the "grouping" is acceptable, it passes the Quality Control and is ready to be sold. IIRC the target pellet hole was a five shot test, and they will keep on doing it until it is satisfactory.
Gamo and Crossman are not one of the brands you want, they are into the business of making plinking and hunting pellets.
I don't know about Beeman, since even when Beeman was selling the FWB, they recommended H&N, and now that Beeman is owned by a Chinese company with zero customer service and laid off everyone, I have no idea about its quality. The company merely wants to squeeze as much profit as possible. Don't quote me on it, I got this from Dr. Beeman himself. My recommendation is to not buy Beeman, even though it DID have a history for AP/AR competition.
In our household we use RWS R-10, RWS Meisterkugeln, Qiang Yuan Match, and H&N Final. Frankly if we all use Qiang Yuan Match (the lowest grade of the three) it won't make a difference.
It seems to me that JSB diabolo is the universal choice for people who use air rifle that shoots 100-200 yards and beyond, and even that they have to go through individual pellet and hand picked them. I presume that means JSB (which is also the most expensive brand) is the best to these guys. But we are dealing with 10m, not 200 yards. So again, it does not matter.
Quality control of the competitive brands have reach a point that there is little need to have a seater and a shaper for the skirt. Again the only people I see using the tool are the one who shoot 200-300 yards.
As for batch testing and stuff, search function will come up with lots of answers.
Of course someone who is much more experience than me has the answer:dand wrote: Check out the video of the MAP Final at WC Grenada. Andrea Amore, Italy earned a Silver Medal with his right and and left eye.
Dan
Anyone else? I'd like to see a list actually.
PS. Just wrote an email to him. I cannot speak Sicilian (except for a few dirty words), so I hope my Italian is good enough for him to understand....and give me some thoughts about cross sighting.
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David Levene
- Posts: 5617
- Joined: Mon Mar 01, 2004 12:49 pm
- Location: Ruislip, UK
My opinion:
Fix #1: Visit an optometrist and explain the problem. Have him/her make glasses with the right lens corrective for any normal eye deficiencies (astigmatism, etc) also with the lens having a fixed focus on the distance to the front sight. The left lens should be a light colour and opaque. That way, you can shoot right hand-right eye which is preferrable - and with both eyes open, also preferable.
Fix #2: If the right eye is considerably less powerful than the left or Fix #1 doesn't work, visit the optometrist again with a set of Knobloch, Champion, etc shooting glasses frames and explain the problem. Have a corrective & focus lens made up for the left eye with adjustments to the lens to fit the shooting glasses frames (it is easier to adjust the lens angle on shooting glasses than on normal frames). Then change your stance, position, grip/grips and possibly trigger position to suit. This will require quite some adjustment to your technique but is possibly the best long-term solution.
Fix #3 (Radical Fix): If none of the above works, change to left hand-left eye shooting. This will take a lot of time, effort in re-training as well as money for new grips. This fix will use the dominant eye but the non-dominant arm/hand. It can be done though (the best example is Karoly Takacs - Hungarian world class shooter in 1936 injured his right hand in 1938, changed to left hand and won Olympic gold in 1948 and 1952 in Rapid Fire - left hand-right eye, I think.)
How serious are you or do you want to be?
I would think that the best fix (theoretically) is the Fix #2 to make use of your dominant arm/hand and eye but the easiest is #1.
Fix #1: Visit an optometrist and explain the problem. Have him/her make glasses with the right lens corrective for any normal eye deficiencies (astigmatism, etc) also with the lens having a fixed focus on the distance to the front sight. The left lens should be a light colour and opaque. That way, you can shoot right hand-right eye which is preferrable - and with both eyes open, also preferable.
Fix #2: If the right eye is considerably less powerful than the left or Fix #1 doesn't work, visit the optometrist again with a set of Knobloch, Champion, etc shooting glasses frames and explain the problem. Have a corrective & focus lens made up for the left eye with adjustments to the lens to fit the shooting glasses frames (it is easier to adjust the lens angle on shooting glasses than on normal frames). Then change your stance, position, grip/grips and possibly trigger position to suit. This will require quite some adjustment to your technique but is possibly the best long-term solution.
Fix #3 (Radical Fix): If none of the above works, change to left hand-left eye shooting. This will take a lot of time, effort in re-training as well as money for new grips. This fix will use the dominant eye but the non-dominant arm/hand. It can be done though (the best example is Karoly Takacs - Hungarian world class shooter in 1936 injured his right hand in 1938, changed to left hand and won Olympic gold in 1948 and 1952 in Rapid Fire - left hand-right eye, I think.)
How serious are you or do you want to be?
I would think that the best fix (theoretically) is the Fix #2 to make use of your dominant arm/hand and eye but the easiest is #1.
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Brian Lafferty
- Posts: 161
- Joined: Fri Jun 29, 2012 10:12 am
- Location: Lyndonville, VT
- Contact:
This is a slightly different issue and if a moderator wants to make it a separate topic, that's fine with me.
I wear progressive lenses. by looking through the lens at the right position, the front sight is in focus while the target is blurred. My head position is fine and neck is not strained. Anyone else forgone shooting glasses optics for progressive lenses?
I wear progressive lenses. by looking through the lens at the right position, the front sight is in focus while the target is blurred. My head position is fine and neck is not strained. Anyone else forgone shooting glasses optics for progressive lenses?
Re: eye dominance
Hi Paula, I see that convincing evidence has already been posted for ignoringcitygirlinthesouth wrote:I am not new to shooting, but new to 10M pistol. For my home defense and carry guns I am good enough to point and shoot. Getting a sight picture in a self defense situation really isn't important. But in 10M air pistol, it's everything. My problem is that I have better than 20/20 vision in my dominant left eye, but poorer vision in my right eye. I am a righthanded shooter. I have tried various methods (including Eyepal) to shoot with my right eye, but nothing comes close to using my left eye and simple adjusting my stance and set up a bit. It's all in the results, right? Surely, there are and have been world class shooters out there who have shot with a cross eye dominance.... Any comments?
ALSO, is there a straightforward philosophy about pellet weight at 10M? Or is it simply a matter of experimenting to learn which pellets are best for your gun?
Thanks to all.
the naysayers, who would force you to shoot with your non dominant(right) eye.
please ignore them and continue shooting with your dominant eye, and right hand.
I have been shooting cross dominant in matches since 1973. I also have always
shot with both eyes open. As far as sight correction goes, you already know that
you only need to see your front sight clearly, so correct your vision appropriately.
Best of luck;
Tony
Hi Brian, I also shot with progressives, marking in black eraseable marker, aBrian Lafferty wrote:This is a slightly different issue and if a moderator wants to make it a separate topic, that's fine with me.
I wear progressive lenses. by looking through the lens at the right position, the front sight is in focus while the target is blurred. My head position is fine and neck is not strained. Anyone else forgone shooting glasses optics for progressive lenses?
small "0" at the spot I focused through. I changed to using an old pair of frames
with a new lens(single prescription) that is corrected for my astigmatism and focus set to 40"
which is an average length to various pistol's front sight in my shooter stance.
This is a much better setup than using a progressive lens. Now I don't need
that little"0" to find my lens position. Also, it doesn't cost that much.
I paid $70.00 for two lenses, one lens to fit my Varga frames and one lens that
was installed into one of my prior prescripton progressive glasses.
Tony
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RandomShotz
- Posts: 553
- Joined: Sat Dec 04, 2010 5:24 pm
- Location: Lexington, KY
Brian -
I'm in the same boat. Fortunately, my astigmatism is negligible so I can use ordinary spherical lenses in my shooting glasses.
I found the problem with using my street glasses to be that the head position is a bit awkward, and sometimes it took a bit to get it right. That is, I would raise the gun and it took a couple of seconds to find the sweet spot in the lens. This also presented a distraction, since I was thinking about head position and not the shot sequence. Since you really want to complete the sequence before you lose stability, which takes roughly 9-12 seconds for me, throwing away a couple of seconds wasn't really working out
Roger.
I'm in the same boat. Fortunately, my astigmatism is negligible so I can use ordinary spherical lenses in my shooting glasses.
I found the problem with using my street glasses to be that the head position is a bit awkward, and sometimes it took a bit to get it right. That is, I would raise the gun and it took a couple of seconds to find the sweet spot in the lens. This also presented a distraction, since I was thinking about head position and not the shot sequence. Since you really want to complete the sequence before you lose stability, which takes roughly 9-12 seconds for me, throwing away a couple of seconds wasn't really working out
Roger.