[Leica] Vision problems, the saga continues

[leica at jayburleson.com (Jay Burleson)]

Peter, why can't you try them locally?
When I was looking for one, Glazer's had several in stock and I was told 
they normally stock them.

Jay

On 5/24/2014 1:09 AM, Peter Klein wrote:
> Some of you may remember my travails with over the last three years with
> two cataract surgeries and several complications.  One lingering issue
> is that while I now have good distance vision, I also have double vision
> when looking to the right.  Several ophthalmologists have slowly
> converged on the problem but never completely solved it, despite many
> appointments and several different changes of glasses.
>
> I finally had my appointment with a doctor who specializes in this
> issue, which is called strabismus. To make a long story short, my eyes
> are slightly misaligned. I had eye muscle surgeries as a kid which
> pretty much fixed it for most of my life, but with age it's reappeared.
> The cataract surgeries changed my vision from nearsighted to normal,
> which made the misalignment more noticeable.  The prism corrections in
> my glasses that the other eye docs prescribed are reasonably good, but
> could be improved.
>
> The verdict is that I will never be free from glasses despite now having
> good distance vision. I am not a candidate for surgery--the misalignment
> is not serious enough to be worth the risk.  I have to wait another
> month and a half for an appointment with the "ortho" person, who will
> mess with more prism corrections and get it as right as they can.
>
> All this directly affects my use of Leica rangefinder cameras. Since the
> cataract surgeries, I've found that I can focus my M6 and M8 much more
> easily bare-eyed than with glasses (I think the glasses' astigmatism
> correction simulates some degree of diopter change). So I need to take
> my glasses off to best use the Ms.  All of this fiddling with glasses
> gets in the way of using the Leica quickly to photograph people, which
> is one of the reasons why I use RF cameras in the first place.
>
> What's maddening is that I know I can get the viewfinder right. I can do
> it with the little Megaperls 1.15x magnifier, which has an adjustable
> diopter (unfortunately, it's not calibrated).  But I can't use it for
> real shooting with glasses, because it has insufficient eye relief to
> see the full normal lens frame, and the metal eyepiece with fingernail
> notches (for focusing) will scratch my glasses. Leica diopters have flat
> metal eyepieces, and I can't try them locally, so I have no idea what
> the eye relief will be or if glueing felt on them would work for me.
>
> I'm not giving up--eventually I'll find out what diopter I need, and
> risk having to sell it if it doesn't work.
>
> The good news, of course, is that I still can see.   :-)  And I will
> continue to make images somehow.  But I am really bummed out by the
> possibility that I might not be able to be decisive-moment Leica RF
> people-shooter any more. I don't want that to happen.
>
> --Peter