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Thread: Your eyesight goes bad. Your doctor says time for a choice.

  1. #1
    Land-Scapegrace Heroique's Avatar
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    Your eyesight goes bad. Your doctor says time for a choice.

    Let's say you enjoy perfect eyesight, a blessing indeed for our line of work.

    Then quickly, your eyesight degenerates – in both eyes.

    LF becomes too difficult – you decide it's time to see a doctor.

    After examining your stricken eyes, your doctor, much to your relief, says don't worry, you're only aging, it's all quite natural, and he can help. He can fix your near vision, or your distant vision – not both – and prescribe spectacles for the other. He adds that you'd always need the spectacles for the type of vision you choose them for.

    In a recent thread on cataract surgery (good luck, Bruce Watson), I mentioned that either choice, in the context of my personal landscape work, would be equally bad: Fix distant vision, but you'd still need spectacles for set-up, focusing, movements; contrariwise, fix near vision, but you'd still need spectacles to see distant (and not-so-distant) subjects from your tripod position. Scylla or Charybdis.

    Such a choice would, of course, be based on many lifestyle considerations, not just your LF work in field, studio, and darkroom, and it would be a very personal choice indeed.

    But when it comes to LF, what choice would you make – and why?

    Also, would you order a special eyeglass design to ease your LF work?
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails eyeglasses.jpg  

  2. #2
    jp's Avatar
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    Re: Your eyesight goes bad. Your doctor says time for a choice.

    Tough.. I use the computer a lot, read, cook, setup camera equipment, I would appreciate natural closer vision. But for driving, I would prefer distant capabilities. But I also like sunglasses driving and many outdoor activities require safety or sun glasses anyways, so I suppose that could be all combined together. I guess you'd have to consider all the things you actually do in a day. I like pictorial stuff for LF, so perfect eyesight would not be a strict requirement, but my eyes are pretty good for now.

  3. #3
    lenser's Avatar
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    Re: Your eyesight goes bad. Your doctor says time for a choice.

    Having worn glasses since age 13, (five decades ago), I haven't any qualms about needing either reading or distance glasses. The frames have been a part of my life for so long that wearing them will be second nature. The choice will have to be based on which focus range will be more advantageous and that's a problem. I do a lot of computer work and love to read, so I lean that way. I also use smaller format cameras, most of which seem to be optimized for eye focus on the screens at near to medium ranges. However, the idea of being able to see at a distance without the annoyance of the damn trifocals I now wear is really attractive, so when I do get my catarcts removed, it will be a choice based on lots of consultation with the opthalmologist and anecdotal info from quite a few people who have had one or the other type of lens.
    "One of the greatest necessities in America is to discover creative solitude." Carl Sandburg

  4. #4

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    Re: Your eyesight goes bad. Your doctor says time for a choice.

    I have myopia, so I always wore glasses and now I have presbyopia with limited ability to see close-up. I use progressive lenses optimised for infinity and normal reading distances. For looking right up at the ground glass I still have to remove the glasses. If you want progressive lenses get the best available as cheaper ones have greater 'hour-glass' distortion in the centre as the lens transitions from your near to far prescription. If you read Ctein on Michael Johnston's blog he has a description (with pictures) of a new type of glasses which allows the wearer to vary the refraction of the lens with a lever in the nose-bridge. I would have gotten one but the designs don't match my face and since I'm so vain...

    Here's the link to the glasses: http://superfocus.com/

  5. #5

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    Re: Your eyesight goes bad. Your doctor says time for a choice.

    yep ... tough choice ... I'm on transitional progressive glasses and as Rory stated, get the extended progressive glasses ... well worth it ... mine are set to see the computer screen well at my normal viewing distance and then the top of the glasses is for infinity and everything else is in between. You get used real quickly to selecting the correct section in the lens for optimal viewing.

    The challenge is the viewfinder of my SLR's ... all of them max out at +3 and I'm not a +3.5 and soon a 4 ... I use the viewfinders without glasses, just sliding them up on my head ... need to work on obtaining a different diopter for my cameras. For LF, I'm using a focusable loupe and that one is adjusted for my eyesight, so not an issue.

    YMMV,

  6. #6

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    Re: Your eyesight goes bad. Your doctor says time for a choice.

    My vision has been such that I first needed distance correction at age 21 but have slowly become more near-sighted over time. Now I can read without glasses all day long, but the computer's been getting fuzzy and distance demands correction. Then the cataracts arrived in both eyes, so I had cataract surgery in only the left eye last Halloween set up for close vision and had the left lens in my glasses remade for distance. This allowed me to pass the vision test for renewal of my driver license. Since the surgery cannot correct for astigmatism (which I have), a new lens was necessary in my frames to account for that. The right eye will be scheduled for sometime in January. Interestingly, I noticed that looking through only the repaired eye everything looked bright and bluish, but looking through the "old" right eye everything looked yellowish and dimmer. I asked the ophthalmologist about that and he said the cataract turns yellow with age and cuts the light down (think dark yellow filter). I mention this because some of you with progressing cataracts may get your color corrections messed up when working with trannies. My surgery in January should straighten things out for me. So when the oncoming headlights at night seem to coming out of a fog (i.e., lens flare), beware ... you're getting close to needing help.

    BTW, one of my LF friends found that when he finally decided he needed glasses, it turned out he needed bifocals, so he had the near focus zone placed in the TOP of the lenses. That way he could comfortably view his groundglass under the darkcloth without having to tilt his back when leaning forward in order to see closeup. He's done a lot of strange things while I've known him, but that seemed to make sense to me.

  7. #7

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    Re: Your eyesight goes bad. Your doctor says time for a choice.

    I think you are over-stressing about cataract surgery. i was the same way but am happy with my final decision.
    I had both eyes done within 2 weeks. My implants are both for distance. I use +2 magnifiers from the 99cent store to read and to fine focus the cameras. I actually can see well enough w/o glasses to rough focus, or to read some text at 2-3 feet.
    Having worn tri-focals for 50 years, I am more than pleased with my current vision.

  8. #8

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    Re: Your eyesight goes bad. Your doctor says time for a choice.

    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Noel View Post
    I think you are over-stressing about cataract surgery. i was the same way but am happy with my final decision.
    I had both eyes done within 2 weeks. My implants are both for distance. I use +2 magnifiers from the 99cent store to read and to fine focus the cameras. I actually can see well enough w/o glasses to rough focus, or to read some text at 2-3 feet.
    Having worn tri-focals for 50 years, I am more than pleased with my current vision.
    Jim - if you're referring to my post, there's no over-stressing involved, just following doctor's recommendations. My wife had both eyes done separately (not close together) and is very satisfied with the results, same doctor, so I'm quite comfortable with his recommendations. I just didn't want to go for the driver vision test with one eye in recovery period and then the holidays following soon after.

  9. #9

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    Re: Your eyesight goes bad. Your doctor says time for a choice.

    Don't get stressed out. I've been short sighted since my early teens then in my early 60's cataracts arrived. Over here we have a National Health Service and I was sent to a specialist clinic where my cataracts were removed, painlessly, about a month apart. Lenses were inserted in my eyes during the procedure and corrected my short sightedness. I do need reading glasses now. The surgeon explained this to me and now instead of paying in excess of £100 for glasses for my short sight I go to the Pound Shop and get reading glasses for £1.
    I developed another problem about 5 years on and membrane in my eye grew behind the lenses, this was sorted in about 1/2 hour by painless laser surgery. I'm happy as a pig in crap. I can see through a SLR without glasses but I need the reading glasses to focus the big cameras before the loupe comes out.
    Pete.

  10. #10

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    Re: Your eyesight goes bad. Your doctor says time for a choice.

    I have had to wear glasses for distance for the last 15 years, a few years back I started needing a little close correction and that is becoming more significant.

    I must say that the whole experience sucks.

    Been fighting with bifocals during this time, tried progressives too but I am among the small percentage of non-adapters, they simply make me hurt, I couldn't keep them on my face for more than 20 minutes without starting a migraine. Normally I'm really quite a nice customer but I was livid when the Doc's staff told me essentially to suck it up for 2-weeks or buy new lenses myself.

    I've given up on trying to make one set of glasses work, tired of tilting my head up or down to see, messing with the position on my nose, and 3 different opticians not being able to get the "line" in an acceptable spot, and quite frankly the opticians all seem to go to the same sales training that includes being told never take no for an answer.

    The business model all our local offices seem to use sucks too. Based on my prior experiences I told the lady at the desk when I made my last appointment that if their sales people even mentioned transitions I'd walk out, I reminded her when I checked in, told the Doc the same thing during the appointment which she wrote in her notes, told the sales/optician the same thing as I sat down. The optician looks at the Rx and launches into his canned speech starting with "You look like a good candidate for Transitions". I walked out and got glasses elsewhere.

    This next round I'm just biting the bullet and going to get 2 dedicated sets, one to see long, one to see short.
    You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. ~ Mark Twain

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