trouble with sight picture


kongone

New member
Help! I am an inexperienced shooter having issue with getting a clear sight picture. I appreciate I'm to focus on the front sight with both eyes open but much of the time the front sight is not clear.....at all. I have also tried using just the dominant eye. I have corrective glasses with progressive lenses. Suggestions?
 

Knew one guy who was told that people with glasses ought to practice without them occasionally in case of a home invasion at night while you're sleeping and can't grab your glasses in time. So he went to the range and practiced without his glasses. Shot much better than he ever had before... he said it was the first time he'd ever had a clear sight picture.

So... take off the glasses and see what happens! If nothing else it'll get you some new info for your ophthalmologist. If you don't want to ask the eye doc about guns, just tell him you're having issues focusing on things close up and that needs to be fixed.
 
Here's my two cents worth….don't worry about keeping both eyes open. I have many new shooters that have issues with keeping both eyes open while maintaining proper sight picture and sight alignment. Use your dominant eye to focus on the front post of the sights, go ahead and close the other eye…remember, the sight picture you should see is the dot or post of the front sight, everything else should be slightly blurry and out of focus.

Concentrate on that front sight, you'll see everything else that you need to see to shoot accurately. Practice without your glasses until you can hit your target, then practice some more with the glasses. Don't set your expectations too high and get frustrated, like everything else in life, practice makes you better. Shoot at close distance to hone your sight picture, breathing, stance, and trigger control. Remember, handguns are not intended to be "long range" tools..concentrate on the accuracy and follow through at short range. When you get comfortable at short range (start at 5 yards, or 15 feet), gradually increase the distance to target. You'll soon find that you can move the target downrange, and still hit it with accurate shots! I really encourage you to seek a NRA certified instructor so he or she can evaluate and correct any problems with your shooting technique.

Best of luck, please contact me if you have any questions.
 
Help! I am an inexperienced shooter having issue with getting a clear sight picture. I appreciate I'm to focus on the front sight with both eyes open but much of the time the front sight is not clear.....at all. I have also tried using just the dominant eye. I have corrective glasses with progressive lenses. Suggestions?

I use progressive lenses, too. You just need to either lift your chin a bit to use a lower portion of the progression in the lens, or look over the top rim of the glasses and shoot without them.
Also, look into XS Big Dot sights for your handgun. That'll give you a nice, fat front pie-plate of a sight to focus on. bigger is better when you have vision problems.

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I too wear progressives and since my job requires sharp focus at several different distances I need them. I found that the 31" to the front sight made me hold my head back so far, as another poster said, to see through the lower sweet spot in the lens, that it was uncomfortable. I went to my optometrist and got a special set of monocular shooting glasses. The dominant eye is perfect for arms length and the other is clear glass for distant target acquisition. Fortunately my doc was cool with the gun. I even brought it into his office so I could look through his machine while he dialed the lenses until I got the sharpest image of the front sight. Obviously those glasses are for the range only where I compete very badly in IPSC shoots but I was surprised at how quickly my brain adapted to the two different focal distances. For self defense, I learned to shoot through my normal glasses. For night without my glasses, I put CTC laser grips on a couple of my usual carry guns. For my nightstand gun I put an Insight Technology M6 laser light. An expensive solution, maybe, but what price for independence, ability and life?
 
I also have progressive lenses but I ask that the bifocal portion of the lens to be lowered so they are never in the way but I can still see out of them when needed.
 
I also have progressive lenses but I ask that the bifocal portion of the lens to be lowered so they are never in the way but I can still see out of them when needed.

yeah I had mine lowered 1mm too. I did so because they were my first pair of progressive lenses and they gave me wicked headaches. The moving of the (line) helped.
 
Here's my two cents worth….don't worry about keeping both eyes open. I have many new shooters that have issues with keeping both eyes open while maintaining proper sight picture and sight alignment. Use your dominant eye to focus on the front post of the sights, go ahead and close the other eye…remember, the sight picture you should see is the dot or post of the front sight, everything else should be slightly blurry and out of focus.

Concentrate on that front sight, you'll see everything else that you need to see to shoot accurately. Practice without your glasses until you can hit your target, then practice some more with the glasses. Don't set your expectations too high and get frustrated, like everything else in life, practice makes you better. Shoot at close distance to hone your sight picture, breathing, stance, and trigger control. Remember, handguns are not intended to be "long range" tools..concentrate on the accuracy and follow through at short range. When you get comfortable at short range (start at 5 yards, or 15 feet), gradually increase the distance to target. You'll soon find that you can move the target downrange, and still hit it with accurate shots! I really encourage you to seek a NRA certified instructor so he or she can evaluate and correct any problems with your shooting technique.

Best of luck, please contact me if you have any questions.

Solid advice from DHinNC, couldn't agree more. Changing stance may also help, it does take some practice to get that focus on the front sight, so practice with different stances as well.
 
Knew one guy who was told that people with glasses ought to practice without them occasionally in case of a home invasion at night while you're sleeping and can't grab your glasses in time. So he went to the range and practiced without his glasses. Shot much better than he ever had before... he said it was the first time he'd ever had a clear sight picture.

So... take off the glasses and see what happens! If nothing else it'll get you some new info for your ophthalmologist. If you don't want to ask the eye doc about guns, just tell him you're having issues focusing on things close up and that needs to be fixed.

Interesting, the only way I could shoot a handgun was with one eye shut (like with a rifle). However some expert range officers worked with me for a few hours one day trying to get me to shoot well with both eyes open. They went through the gamut: grip position, grip strength, trigger pull, etc. You name it they tested on me. Then one of them asked me how old I was. I told them (at the time 42). He just bust out laughing. He said I'd need either bifocals or progressives that were geared for how far the front sight was and not for how close I like to read. I rejected his hypothesis for about a year, then thought, hey nothing else has worked. Dad'gum, if he wasn't spot on. The first day at the range, that front sight was clear as day and my shooting (especially at long range) improved dramatically.

So kongone, the fact that you said you have progressives tells me you may want to go back to the eye doctor and get the bottom part of the lens measured correctly for the distance your front sight is and not for how close you like to read. That would be my bet.
 
I wear very low power reading glasses to see the front sight and target equally. Neither perfectly in focus, but at least I may see the gun sights now. Without my glasses, I cannot see front or rear sights on my gun; it is just a fuzzy blob.

I have tried every trick in the book to keep both eyes open for sidearm or scoped rifle targeting. Nothing worked. I have a hard time keeping focused on things without forcing a focus, if that makes any sense. My eye muscles or something are screwed-up. Have done the exercises. Nada.

I can keep both eyes open on my AR with my Red Dot mounted far forward on its rail (preferred place for it, for me), with my ultra low power reading glasses.

Glass on the AR or any other rifle, have to close one eye. At least I don't have to wear my +.25 to +.50 reading glasses with scopes with diopter adjustments.

So, anything but the red dot on the AR, I have to say tohellwithit and close one eye.

Wear +2.5 for normal reading distances. (sigh)

If there is help out there for me, including eye surgery, please chime-in. Getting old sucks.
 
Nothing wrong with a red dot on an AR. I use one with flip up irons as backup (co-witnessed) If it works for you, stick with it. Red dots are generally designed for the Binden method of shooting though, allowing you to keep both eyes open with no magnification to keep a better field of view and better visual triangulation for depth perception.
 
Nothing wrong with a red dot on an AR. I use one with flip up irons as backup (co-witnessed) If it works for you, stick with it. Red dots are generally designed for the Binden method of shooting though, allowing you to keep both eyes open with no magnification to keep a better field of view and better visual triangulation for depth perception.
Exactly! The front post annoys me a bit, when using the red dot, but I'm not modifying the 6920 in any way.

Also have a Nikon 3-12X 42mm, BDC600 reticle scope for it too. Fenix TK15 underneath on a rail mount. That's all I need for it.
 

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