I have a couple questions about glasses, to others that wear them. I’m myopic, (nearsighted) by about 5 diopters and I recently got new glasses. First, can you see clearly through your whole lens? If I turn 30 or 40 degrees off axis, things get blurry. It’s mostly only noticable if I’m reading text, but then it’s very obvious. They say this is normal, that it’s always that way. Do things look this way to you, or are they clear all the way across?
Second, I got antireflective coating. Now the first time I got this I was stunned. I could drive around at night and everything was crystal clear. It was almost unreal, like I was looking at a video game. I could see the shape of car headlights and streetlights without any stars around them. Now I see stars. It’s still better than without the coating, but not like the last pair. They redid my coating, and the adjusted my prescription but it’s still not as good as the prior ones. How do things look at night for you, if you have anti-reflective lenses?
I may think of other questions but that’s all I’ve got right now. Feel free to add similar questions of your own to the discussion.
Things seem clear, but I have a fishbowl effect around the edges of my lenses. It really bothers me; for instance, when I’m walking downstairs the edges of the stairs get bowed inward, and sometimes I almost fall because I miss a step. I have to look directly at the steps in order to see the edges without the strange bow to them.
I don’t have reflective coating. Mainly I wear contacts, which give me a fine view at night with no fishbowl effect. Also keeps onions from making me cry, which is excellent.
I’m quite nearsighted myself, and I’d say that I only get clear vision through about 2/3 to 3/4 of my lenses. I’ve worn glasses since I was five, and I needed them earlier, so I’m pretty used to the fuzzy edges of my field of vision. The reason for this is that the prescription is truer in the center of the lens, whereas the edges of the lenses are so distorted by the need of the curvature that they aren’t really my prescription.
No reflective coating on mine (might spring for it on my next pair, though).
But my peripheral vision, and vision if I angle my eyes “down” is blurry. Like Elysian, it mostly causes trouble with the stairs. It makes them seem like they are further down than they are; if I keep my head up while I’m walking downstairs, I’m fine. If I angle my eyes downward, I come real close to falling.
I often experience distortion, chromatic aberration and loss of focus towards the edges of the lenses of new glasses, even when my prescription hasn’t changed - just a change of frame means the lenses will be configured differently.
It usually goes away completely after a week or two, to the extent that I can no longer see the distortion, aberration or blur, even if I deliberately look for it.
I tend to see things wrong on the sides, but I think it’s more to do with the edge of the glasses than the curve of the lens.
And ditto on what Mangetout said, though I’ve never switched frames with the same prescription. But whenever I get a new one it takes a few days to get used to it–the more difference between the old and the new, the worse my vision is initially. Everything looks curved around the edges. It certainly makes walking fun when the floor doesn’t look flat :dubious:
I’m nearsighted, too. My glasses are clear no matter where I look through them. I’ve never seen the starry effect you described and I have the coating on my lenses as well.
I am nearsighted. I am wearing a ten year old set, glass lenses, metal frame.
If I keep my head still, and just move my eyes, I have clear vision wherever I look. My peripheral vision is not in focus in any direction (which I assume it’s not supposed to be, even in folks who dont need glasses… right?).
I bought a spare set of glasses a few months ago. (Since my prefered frame is ten years old, it’s beginning to weaken. Eventually, it will fall apart.) Plastic lenses, metal frame, much lighter in wieght, which was disconcerting. I kept trying to push them back up my nose when they didnt need to be. Also, I noticed more distortion in my peripheral vision than normal.
The only issue I have is with the peripherals because my lenses end, no bowing or anything. I never see stars or stuff either.
And yeah getting a new prescription is super weird for a day or two. I get new glasses every two years and until recently my scrip got worse every time. It’s always trippy at first with a new scrip. I am super blind too, so that sucks.
New glasses this year. Nearsighted, but only in the left eye. Crystal-clear all the way around. If I see stars at night, I had better be looking skyward, or else my glasses are dirty. Anti-reflective coating.
My correction is -14 diopters. If I look to the sides, there is slight distortion; it’s difficult to read, say, the printing on a box. At the very edges there is a fishbowl effect, but I find that most of the fishbowliness goes away a few days after getting new lenses as my brain adjusts. My lenses are, however, thick enough that they act as a spectrometer at the sides, and certain colors will actually move around quite a bit. It’s kind of fun making rainbows out of every lightbulb I see.
The optical center is placed in front of your pupil. The higher your prescription, the more distortion you’ll see as you look outside the optical center.
That “star” effect could be a few different things. The lenses might not be as clean as you think (unlikely) or, the coating could be “crazed” which is very hard to see. I’ve had my lenses craze on me, and it took me a long time to spot it. Crazing is hard to describe, but under the right light, looks like little crackles in the coating. I’m betting that’s your star-effect.
I got my first pair of glasses with antireflective coating last year, and at first experienced the “blurry” effect that you’re talking about. I adjusted, and don’t notice it anymore.
What I do experience that drives me crazy, though, is that I can’t keep these damn glasses clean. I always have fingerprint smudges, etc., on them. I have never had this problem before. I will not be getting antireflective coating again.
I had that happen to a pair of mine once - I kept on thinking they were just dirty, so I gave them a spray and a polish, which seemed to work, but only because the spray solution was filling the cracks.
I also bougt my first glasses with plastic lenses and anti reflective coating. They were terribly scratch prone. I took them back and complained. they replaced the lenses with no ani reflective coating, and they have been just fine.
I don’t have a blurriness problem unless my glasses aren’t on straight. I have astigmatism, so my lenses are ground funny and are therefore angle sensitive. Otherwise, I’m fine. If the lenses are dirty, then all bets are off.
I can see fine through the whole lens, but my prescription is so weak (.25 diopters) that it doesn’t really mean anything.
Why do I bother with glasses if I need so little help, you ask? I have a condition called hyperopia, wherein my eyes don’t focus automatically. In other words, to read a distant sign, I have to adjust my vision myself. I’ve had this my whole life, so it’s no big deal (and I didn’t know that I did that until I was told), but it does produce a little bit of fatigue. That fatigue, combined with some sort of hormone/puberty thing, caused me to have blurred vision when I got up at least once a day last summer; my glasses magnify just enough so that I can see fine all the time (mostly) now.
(I’ve been having a little more trouble in this area lately, so I may need a slightly stronger prescription, but I’m too lazy to arrange another appointment with the ophthalmologist and then buy another pair op lenses…