Effective Use of Shooting Frames

It wasn't me!

Been playing around with mine, and rather than spend more time with aching eyes and wasting ammo, I thought I'd better try and establish some ground rules for using frames and a lens before I go further and possibly further wrong. Is there a guideline distance between the lens and the eye and the lens and the rear iris or any other measurements like that? I found my eye was straining yesterday and the window I had to aim before the eye unfocused itself through strain was too narrow to take shots reliably. I shot okay with it at the previous match though, but was still adjusting, so didn't note settings. So, any guidelines for me?

rrpc

I've no real experience of these, but I would have thought that as close to the eye as possible would be the optimum for a lens.

Obviously in the prone position the distance is harder to optimise, but that's where I'd start.

BountyHunter

Hi It wasn’t me!
I have my glasses a month or 2 now and found that as RRPC suggested try get the lense as close to your eye as possible. This was a little tricky but I had a very helpful club member with me to make adjustments as needed.
Get someone to take a profile picture when you’re in position as this will clearly show if your lense is in line vertically and parallel with the rear iris. I found this very helpful.
With regard to distances from lense to iris I can’t really give much advice other than try various distances and see how it feels on your eyes.
I can’t say I’ve ever had eye strain as you’ve described.
That’s my limited experience so far anyway, hope some of it may be of use.
BountyHunter.

Sparks

Where the lens is isn't as important as what the eye relief is and how consistent the setup is. Put it half-way between your eye and the rearsight. What's more important is that the lens be centred on the rearsight and that the plane of the lens and the plane of the rearsight be parallel.

If your eye is straining, are you sure the lens is correct? I can't imagine that it would be so critical that a few millimetres forward or back would be the difference between clarity and strained eye muscles!

rrpc

Just to add to what bountyhunter said: after thinking some more on the subject I would suggest if the lens is in the correct position relative to your eye, the distance to the iris should be irrelevant. In other words your eye is the same as everyone else once the correction is in place and the rules about eye relief should be identical.

On eye relief: the further you are from the iris, the clearer the picture and the less eye strain. Within reason of course