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Rustam,

My mother's business fits hundreds of pairs of progressives every year and there are a few basic details that you need to work out with an optometrist - preferrrably NOT an Ophthalmologist because they do not have the technical skills to de-center and fit any lenses. A lot of the MRC crowd would come to my parents for their work and they would have them bring whatever gun they wanted to use along. I am sure that a similar approach would help. Some suggestions:

1. If you use wide corridor progressives in order to get a somewhat wider field of intermediate and near vision, the progression would also be more gradual and the lens would have to have a larger diameter than a narrow corridor progressive lens. This would mean that you would need to get the lenses mounted on a larger frame and the progression from distance vision (focusing on the front sight and the target) through the rear leaves would be difficult

2. Hoya and American Optical (who are now owned by some Japanese company) and Essilor of France (who invented progressives) make progressive lenses for the Asian markets which are small in order to accomodate smaller Chinese / Japanese faces. Being smaller, the lenses have a mroe rapid progression between the distance, intermediate and near segments and can be mounted on smaller frames. For your purpose, they would have the three distances closer together and allow for more easy acquisition of a sight picture when you shoot

3. Normally, in fitting progressives, opticians mark the lenses so that the progression begins parallel to the lower eyelid and then goes on downwards and converges a little to follow the path that the eyes would take while looking at close ojects. When you get progressives fitted for your rifle, if your optician will not get a heart attack, take the rifle with you to the store and have him mark the segment height on a former so that it is about a millimeter or slightly more higher than he would mark it if you were not getting the lenses fitted for shooting. If you want me to talk to the optometrist, I would be happy to do this

4. I would also suggest that you have one pair of spectacles for shooting alone and get a separate pair for regular wear - trying to get both to do the same job would only make you uncomfortable. They cannot do this, too, for the reasons that I have just described. Also make sure that your shooting spectacles are hard coated if you use CR 39, NS 200 or Polycarbonate lenses and toughened if you use glass ones

I am not sure what is available or not available in India at the moment. Some years ago most opticians there used ISraeli Shamir or Eyal progressives and you had some occasional supplies of Hoya compacts, Essilor or Kodak lenses come in. Import laws and similar make availability a bit iffy - Asif's sister and brother in law should be able to guide you on this. If they have any difficulty procuring the right kind of blanks, ask your brother to buy the blanks and send them from the UK for processing in Bangalore. I can tell you where he could get them in the UK. Just make sure that the lenses are NOT fitted anywhere other than where you can supervise them. Post cataract and IOL implant vision is usually very good as far as distance vision is concerned. Near vision can be iffy, though, if the decentration and fitting are not done properly

Cheers!

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The Ark was made by amateurs. Experts built the Titanic.

Mehul Kamdar

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