Getting used to contacts ?

mjantti

mjantti

Enjoying life
Silver Member
Hi !

Recently I went off and bought myself a pair of contact lenses and they feel quite good in everyday life after having a pair of glasses on my face for almost 20 years. So, I went to the pool room one day to try to figure out if they help my game. And, it turned out I couldn't shoot sh*t with those contacts ! I have quite strong glasses (-5.5 diopter) and what glasses do is that they "shrink" the world before your eyes. So, with contacts the world that I see is "expanded" and I need much more eye movement when aiming and that seems to be quite difficult for me. I just can't see where the cue is going and it felt I was aiming just by feel.

I also have some cylindrical correction in my glasses which cannot be included in the contacts and sometimes my right eye (I have a dominant left eye) produces a ghost image of the ball with the contacts which is quite distracting.

My question is that has anyone went from glasses to contacts after a long "career" in shooting with glasses ? How fast were you able to adapt ? Week ? Month ? The next tournament season starts in just over a month and I'm pondering should I relearn my aiming process with contacts or stick with the good ol' way. Any suggestions or advice ? I've had glasses for 20 years and I have been playing pool for 15 years.
 
Mikko,

I've been wearing lenses for 36 years, so I can't help you about the sudden switch part, but I can tell you that it sounds like you have some astigmatism going on with your right eye and you should be having contact lenses custom made for you. I hope you just didn't go into an eye place and have them pick a set of a shelf and have you try them on. I am at -8 diopters and wear gas permeable lenses. They have to be custom made for me because I have severe astigmatism in both eyes. I can't wear soft lenses because they cannot correct the astigmatism.

Do yourself a favor and go to either a private optometrist or opthamologist and have your eyes diagnosed. The eye stores out there selling glasses and contacts will only do a "best fit" for you.

Barbara
 
mjantti said:
Hi !

Recently I went off and bought myself a pair of contact lenses and they feel quite good in everyday life after having a pair of glasses on my face for almost 20 years. So, I went to the pool room one day to try to figure out if they help my game. And, it turned out I couldn't shoot sh*t with those contacts ! I have quite strong glasses (-5.5 diopter) and what glasses do is that they "shrink" the world before your eyes. So, with contacts the world that I see is "expanded" and I need much more eye movement when aiming and that seems to be quite difficult for me. I just can't see where the cue is going and it felt I was aiming just by feel.

I also have some cylindrical correction in my glasses which cannot be included in the contacts and sometimes my right eye (I have a dominant left eye) produces a ghost image of the ball with the contacts which is quite distracting.

My question is that has anyone went from glasses to contacts after a long "career" in shooting with glasses ? How fast were you able to adapt ? Week ? Month ? The next tournament season starts in just over a month and I'm pondering should I relearn my aiming process with contacts or stick with the good ol' way. Any suggestions or advice ? I've had glasses for 20 years and I have been playing pool for 15 years.
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Barbara is correct. I'm at -4.5 and when I did the initial switch from glasses to contacts, I used gas permiable lenses. They're hard lenses and a bit uncomfortable in the beginning but the ghost problems you're encountering will likely not occur. Gas Permiables usually take about 2 weeks to get used to, are more expensive but will last a year (sometimes more) without replacing. I actually switched to soft-lenses recently and have made a completely smooth transition. It turns out, my astigmatism was less severe than initially diagnosed (12 years ago).

As for the big switch from glasses to contacts, it was near seamless for me. I put on contacts and went right to the poolroom. I never really took a step backward but I know my game jumped about two to three weeks later. Even though there may be slightly more eye movement, there's far less head-movement. You can see more, more clearly and it takes less effort. On the Discovery Channel, I saw a guy wearing glasses that made the world appear upside-down and reverse (HUGE glasses). It took him 2 weeks to completely adjust. Just be patient and try not to think about it.
 
Contact lenses

I have worn contact lenses for 37 years, and I also wear 'hard' lenses because
of my front and back astigmatism too, plus I have scarred corneas. I am at
-10 diopters.

I have had a special soft/hard lense on, ech! hated it. Soft lenses suck. A
little bit of heat and vision blurs up bad. Plus they feel like boulders in your
eyes.

I wear Polycon 2's, small, thin, and after you get use to them, you don't even
know they are there. I think they help me shooting Pool. I noticed a difference as a teenager when I first got some when I was 18, and I noticed a difference recently when I had my glasses on, and shot a couple games of Pool. I could not see sh*t with the glasses, plus having them sit on your nose and slide down a little every time you got down on a shot was damn annoying.

I think contacts give you a little more contrast, which in a Pool room setting
is not bad. The images of the balls is clearer than with glasses, especially
the small contact point on the object ball to make it. Now, I have to have
split vision on my contacts, meaning my left contact is for distance, while
my right contact is for close-up.

I had a special pair of contacts made once for just shooting Pool, with
focus length at 1 to 9 foot, but I could not see as well with them as just
my regular contacts.

Anyone that thinks 'soft' lenses are great has never tried 'hard' lenses. My
doctor has put several soft/hard type lenses on me just to try out because
of getting 'more oxygen' to my eyes, but I could not stand them. Your eyelids drag over them, they are too thick, there circumference is too big, they are
too suseptable to climate or weather changes which blur vision, plus if you sleep in soft lenses for a few hours, you have to take out, clean, lubricate, and put back in, where with hard lenses, you can nap a few hours, wake up
and the lenses are still just as clear.

The irritations you suffer with soft lenses will make tense and uncomfortable.
 
mjantti said:
(I have a dominant left eye) produces a ghost image of the ball with the contacts which is quite distracting.
Click to expand...

I think this may be part of the getting-used-to-contacts process, best as I can remember from way back. Tried playing with glasses a couple times over the years and the balls looked like eggs, so to hell with that.

I've been wearing various types of lenses since I was 17, er, 28 years ago. Hard lenses at first, then gas perm for a number of years after getting drunk with the lenses in and waking up with corneal abrasions a couple of times! For the past few years, I've been wearing daily disposables, which are absolutely amazing. They're 70% water and you'll never know they're there ... and no problems with smoke, dust, wind, etc. The expense ain't much more, and you're not going to be able to live it up with the money you save in the next life, or the nursing home, I say.

Good luck with your adjustment. If you're patient, I think that ghost deal will fade. I too have astigmatism, whatever the hell that is, and have had for many years. My left eye is -5.5 and the right is -6, but I can't blame anything at the table on my vision, which was 20/15 last I checked.
 
I love my contacts - BUT.............

I love my soft contacts - BUT - I only wear them for playing pool. They have been set for optimal vision at 5 feet. I have an astigmatism and don't even want to wear contacts for everything else. I use tri-focal lenses w/ hard lines. I don't like figuring out where to look out of them. I need one script for reading, one for computer & one for driving & distance.

TY & GL
 
OldHasBeen said:
I love my soft contacts - BUT - I only wear them for playing pool. They have been set for optimal vision at 5 feet. I have an astigmatism and don't even want to wear contacts for everything else. I use tri-focal lenses w/ hard lines. I don't like figuring out where to look out of them. I need one script for reading, one for computer & one for driving & distance.

TY & GL
Click to expand...


Yeah, my contacts are made from the foreskin of an American Bald Eagle. They're very rare. If you want, I can send you a pair for a mere $22,000.
 
From strictly a pool sense, I wish I could go back to my contacts. They were daily wear disposables and were great. In 1999, I had Lasik done and it has been wonderful (20/15 vision the next day and since) in all areas of life, EXCEPT pool.

I have had the worst time seeing balls since the surgery. I don't know if my sight is optimized for a distance greater than the table (unlike OHB above) or what. But, I just can't see the edges as clear and sharp as with my old contacts. As a result, my shot-making suffers.

And, no, I don't get extra weight when I whine about it! :(

To the original question, my transition from glasses to contacts many years ago was seamless and immediate. Like Jude, I thought it was immediately better because I didn't have to adjust my head as much to encompass the whole table. And, there is no distortion like there can be as your eyes look at other parts of the glasses lenses (edges vs the middle).
 
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Now thats SILLY !

Jude Rosenstock said:
Yeah, my contacts are made from the foreskin of an American Bald Eagle. They're very rare. If you want, I can send you a pair for a mere $22,000.
Click to expand...

- But The price sounds right!

TY & GL
 
ScottR said:
From strictly a pool sense, I wish I could go back to my contacts. They were daily wear disposables and were great. In 1999, I had Lasik done and it has been wonderful (20/15 vision the next day and since) in all areas of life, EXCEPT pool.

I have had the worst time seeing balls since the surgery. I don't know if my sight is optimized for a distance greater than the table (unlike OHB above) or what. But, I just can't see the edges as clear and sharp as with my old contacts. As a result, my shot-making suffers.

And, no, I don't get extra weight when I whine about it! :(

To the original question, my transition from glasses to contacts many years ago was seamless and immediate. Like Jude, I thought it was immediately better because I didn't have to adjust my head as much to encompass the whole table. And, there is no distortion like there can be as your eyes look at other parts of the glasses lenses (edges vs the middle).
Click to expand...


What do you think would have happened if they corrected to 20/20 instead of 20/15? I suffered the same thing with my contacts in that I could see a golf ball land on a certain blade of grass from way out, but I couldn't play pool worth a damn. When I got my lenses weakened, I couldn't even see the ball land anymore or where it ended up, but I was back to playing good pool.
There always seems to be a tradeoff. If I didn't play pool, I would have stayed the other way and loved it.
 
drivermaker said:
What do you think would have happened if they corrected to 20/20 instead of 20/15? I suffered the same thing with my contacts in that I could see a golf ball land on a certain blade of grass from way out, but I couldn't play pool worth a damn. When I got my lenses weakened, I couldn't even see the ball land anymore or where it ended up, but I was back to playing good pool.
There always seems to be a tradeoff. If I didn't play pool, I would have stayed the other way and loved it.
Click to expand...
I never thought about it like that. They didn't mean to correct me to 20/15, and, unfortunately, they can reverse it. My situation could be the same as you had, in that I can see the golf ball land (I probably don't hit it as far as you - :p ) and pool suffers. When I was playing a lot of golf and hardly any pool, I loved it!

I wonder if I could get a pair of contacts that would make the table length vision sharper. I may have to look into that.
 
ScottR said:
I never thought about it like that. They didn't mean to correct me to 20/15, and, unfortunately, they can reverse it. My situation could be the same as you had, in that I can see the golf ball land (I probably don't hit it as far as you - :p ) and pool suffers. When I was playing a lot of golf and hardly any pool, I loved it!

I wonder if I could get a pair of contacts that would make the table length vision sharper. I may have to look into that.
Click to expand...


Try it first with a pair of some "El Cheapo" reading glasses in Wal-Mart or Dollar Store. Probably no more than a +1 would do it.
 
OldHasBeen said:
I love my soft contacts - BUT - I only wear them for playing pool. They have been set for optimal vision at 5 feet. I have an astigmatism and don't even want to wear contacts for everything else. I use tri-focal lenses w/ hard lines. I don't like figuring out where to look out of them. I need one script for reading, one for computer & one for driving & distance.
Click to expand...

OHB, I just read a quote from Louie Roberts and thought you'd be interested: "Who ever heard of glasses for pool players? Well, I have now, and they really live up to their claims. I can see the cue ball and its relationship to the object ball with absolute clarity, and that is important in the shots I have to make. It should be important to anyone who takes their game seriously. They give you that extra edge, and that can win pool games." :)

JAM
 
This is an interesting discussion. I've worn soft contacts for over 20 years, got tired of sweat on my glasses when I went jogging. Before I retired I always shot perfect or near perfect scores on qualification, target 7 to 25 yards away but I have to wear a pair of K-Mart specials over the contacts to read with. The closer in, the less clear an object is. I'm sure OHB's idea of contacts adjusted to 5 feet would be better for pool, or a pair of K-Mart specials over the contacts to adjust to 5 feet.

Some of the major league baseball players are wearing special contacts which are supposed to make them see the baseball better. Brian Roberts is one guy who is wearing them and he is having a breakout year. They claim it helps them see the seams on the baseball.
 
RichardCranium said:
and there is no edge on long cut shots...(just fuzz).....Have no idea what that means....
Click to expand...


It means that you obviously use the "Center To Fuzz" aiming system...whether you know it or not. :p :cool:
 
Thanks for your replies, this time you were just slightly off topic on most posts :)

I think I'll find out more about those special contacs. Thanks again !
 
mjantti said:
this time you were just slightly off topic on most posts :)
!
Click to expand...


Um, you expect anything else? Feel fortunate Marissa didn't hop in and start talking about her usual topic of conversation!


That's um, sewing. Right guys?
 
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