twofewscrews
Member
So back in February, based on the recommendations from various THR members (not placing blame, its my eyes, not your fault for making good faith recommendations), I picked up a Bushnell TRS-25 for use as a range toy. What I didn't know then, or rather didn't realize, was that I have astigmatism in both eyes. When I looked through the optic I saw a starburst shaped dot instead of an actual dot. This didn't bother me as I had heard mixed reviews about the red dot and its clarity under various light conditions.The starburst was more pronounced in low light conditions and all but vanished when I took it out to the range for the first time in bright sunny conditions. Last weekend I went to the range with a friend on a cloudy day and had a lot of trouble dialing it in. The starburst was so pronounced that I was unable to properly zero it but my friend did not have the same trouble I did.
An intense internet search (its hard to find information when you don't know what to search) revealed that people with astigmatism have trouble using red dots.
Astigmatism basically means your eyes are football shaped rather spherical.
If car lights halo or appear blurry you probably have astigmatism
If you already have a red dot that appears blurred or otherwise broken before you blame the RDS rotate the RDS clockwise or counter clockwise. If the image remains constant it's your eyes. If the image rotates its the RDS.
From my research I found that there are four fixes and none of them are 100 percent guaranteed to work.
The first and least expensive fix is polarized shooting glasses. The polarization color to correct the astigmatism, yellow red, grey, black, etc. will be entirely dependent on your eyes. Depending on how bad your astigmatism is this may or may not work.
The second is to get corrective lenses or contacts. This method has produced pretty good results but can be expensive and once again, depending on how bad your astigmatism is may not work. An optometrist can make you safety rated corrective lenses for shooting but not all optometrists are capable of this.
The third method is corrective eye surgery which is almost guaranteed to work but is the most expensive method unless you have great insurance.
The fourth option is to get a prism based optic/rds. An RDS works on a reflective principle. The light if transmitted to the front lense and then reflected back towards your eye, thus people with astigmatism see blurred or starburst like dots instead of clean crisp red dots. I can't quite explain how a prism optic works, but this image from Monstrum should do the trick.
From what I have read, I have not purchased a prism optic yet, prism optics work for people with astigmatism. Some people have had good results with true holographic but others have not whereas prism optics seemingly always work.
I'm no expert but I hope this information is helpful to someone. I searched the forum for astigmatism in conjunction with RDS and while there were posts in threads about RDS that mentioned astigmatism there was nothing specifically talking about how astigmatism affects using an RDS or workarounds/fixes. Hopefully this will prevent someone from making the same mistake I did.
Happy hunting
An intense internet search (its hard to find information when you don't know what to search) revealed that people with astigmatism have trouble using red dots.
Astigmatism basically means your eyes are football shaped rather spherical.
If car lights halo or appear blurry you probably have astigmatism
If you already have a red dot that appears blurred or otherwise broken before you blame the RDS rotate the RDS clockwise or counter clockwise. If the image remains constant it's your eyes. If the image rotates its the RDS.
From my research I found that there are four fixes and none of them are 100 percent guaranteed to work.
The first and least expensive fix is polarized shooting glasses. The polarization color to correct the astigmatism, yellow red, grey, black, etc. will be entirely dependent on your eyes. Depending on how bad your astigmatism is this may or may not work.
The second is to get corrective lenses or contacts. This method has produced pretty good results but can be expensive and once again, depending on how bad your astigmatism is may not work. An optometrist can make you safety rated corrective lenses for shooting but not all optometrists are capable of this.
The third method is corrective eye surgery which is almost guaranteed to work but is the most expensive method unless you have great insurance.
The fourth option is to get a prism based optic/rds. An RDS works on a reflective principle. The light if transmitted to the front lense and then reflected back towards your eye, thus people with astigmatism see blurred or starburst like dots instead of clean crisp red dots. I can't quite explain how a prism optic works, but this image from Monstrum should do the trick.
From what I have read, I have not purchased a prism optic yet, prism optics work for people with astigmatism. Some people have had good results with true holographic but others have not whereas prism optics seemingly always work.
I'm no expert but I hope this information is helpful to someone. I searched the forum for astigmatism in conjunction with RDS and while there were posts in threads about RDS that mentioned astigmatism there was nothing specifically talking about how astigmatism affects using an RDS or workarounds/fixes. Hopefully this will prevent someone from making the same mistake I did.
Happy hunting
