POI shift with Shooting Glasses

CarlosDJackal

Private
Full Member
Minuteman
Feb 27, 2013
36
22
Central Virginia
Okay, I have lost count of how many Shooting Glasses I have tried. But some of the brands I have purchased and shot with are: Rudy Project, Oakleys, Sawfly, Wiley X, just to name a few. And yet, when using a scoped rifle (Nightforce) I find that I have an amplified parallax that seem to make the reticle float around and I cannot adjust out. So I started to shoot without Eye Protection.

But the problem with this is twofold:
(1) I am very protective of my vision and tend to close my eyes upon firing. I think I do this to protect my eyes in case the gun blew up.
(2) Since I am fa sighted, I need bifocals to be able to read the scope's turret settings and the power ring.

Has anyone else had this experience? Can someone recommend a Eye Pro that does not have, or has very minimal, parallax? How many here shoot without Eye Pro when using scoped rifles?
 
Shooting with eyes closed when the sear breaks is a sign of a small flinch. Don't be afraid of the gun --- And I still recommend wearing eye pro for the shooting sports.
 
They make plastic stick-on cheaters, I've used them. Put one on the lens of the eye you are not looking through the scope with ( in the bottom half). They are crescent shaped. They come in different powers. That eye can read the turrets and not mess with your scope. I think by closing your eyes you eliminate one fundamental- follow through.
 
Eye protection is a good call, but you need to break that habit of closing your eyes. You shouldn't be firing that rifle if you don't feel confident or safe with something about it.

No pun intended, but look at this this way... If the rifle did have a malfunction, a few hundredths of soft eyelid skin isn't going to protect anything. Like Erno86 said, if you are closing your eyes you can guarantee there is a flinch of some degree mixed in also.
 
I'm wondering if you have an aberration in some of your shooting glasses.

If not...try adjusting parallax on infinity against the naked sky.
 
Parallax is an error is focal points between two objects. Your eyeglasses are not affecting scope parallax. The objective lens forms an image at the plane of the reticle when correctly adjusted. That adjustment is independent of the observer. The ocular lens assembly then magnifies that image and delivers it to your eye. We determine that parallax has been removed by moving our eye behind the ocular to see if we perceive movement between the reticle and target. Eyeglasses cannot affect this adjustment.

Now, if your ocular focus is not set correctly, your ability to see the reticle/target combination may become an issue. If you use progressive lenses for example (as I do) you will find that there is a particular point in the lens you must be looking though so that the focus is correct. That means your cheek weld must be consistent so that you are behind the scope the same way every time. You must set ocular focus correctly for that point.

When correctly set behind the rifle, aim at an area beyond 1k, like distant clouds with the parallax set to infinity and magnification set to max. Close your shooting eye. Open it for about 1 second, the reticle should be perfectly sharp, clear and solid black and you should see a full field of view. If not, adjust ocular focus a bit and try again. DO NOT look though the scope while setting the ocular! Your eye will adjust (poorly) and you will not have a correct setting. Make an adjustment, glance into the scope and be sure the view is instantly perfect. Once this is done, lock the adjustment. It does not need to be changed until your prescription changes.

Shooting without eye protection is pure foolishness, like driving with no seatbelts, closing your eyes is not a solution.