Small problem and a question

[dragonimp]

I have a small stye or zit or something at the corner of my eye that's causing some irritation, so I'm giving it the warm washcloth treatment - though not right at the moment, because this keyboard requires two hands - and since it's my left eye, this really limits what I can do. No reading, or anything else that requires me to see details. I suppose I could watch something, if I didn't care too much about tracking the screen. I might have to stick to podcasts.

Which brings me to my question, for those who wear glasses or other corrective lenses.

TV usually depicts poor sight by unfocusing the camera, but I've never thought that looked right. For me, it's more like ... closest analogy I can come up with is trying to look through static. The details are there, I can tell they're there, but unless I stare right at them they tend to be intermittently obscured. And small things like letters don't stay put. So my question is: how is uncorrected vision for anyone else? Is the "blurry camera" depiction accurate, close, way off? Are my eyes (eye) just weird?

Sub-question: do your glasses actually give you clear vision? (Mine never have.)

Comments

[reddheart.livejournal.com]

The blurry camera thing is about the best way that bad vision can be recreated and have it make sense, I guess. Kind of the "universal standard". :P I think it describes really bad vision more than people who see basic things OK, but have trouble with details (i.e. the weaker end of the nearsighted spectrum).

The static description is pretty close to what I see. Plus, smaller items become obscured, almost camoflaged..say, my cell phone, a pair of scissors, or even my glasses if I'm not wearing them (which is why if I'm not wearing glasses and I've misplaced something, the first thing I do is put them on). This goes double in dimly-lit places, or in hotel rooms (mediocre vision + low light + no glasses = increased potential for DanyStupid).

My newest pair of glasses are really good, and get me almost-perfect vision, in my opinion. Contacts are pretty close to my glasses, but I have some issues with up-close focusing sometimes when I wear them. It's why as a rule, I generally wear glasses on a regular basis and limit contacts to occasional wear and events.

[dragonimp.livejournal.com]

Everything happens to extremes in Hollywood, anyway XD. But I don't imagine there's any other easy way to show vision problems on screen.

I wonder what the mechanics are of objects being obscured, whether it's the eyes or the brain ignoring something it doesn't have enough "information" for. I've had that happen, too, and it always feels like, well, it's there, why am I not seeing it?

[mayracs.livejournal.com]

I too have corrective lenses and I agree, many people think its blurry but I see tiny pixels of color every where not fuzz. Even with my glasses on I see tiny pricks of color instead of smooth color.

After the Matrix came out I always wondered if my program was faulty and the robots need to fix my resolution XDD

[dragonimp.livejournal.com]

The pricks of color sounds similar to my "static," I wonder how common that is? It's one of those things (like not having depth perception) I didn't even question until I got older because that's just how the world was to me.

LOL, yeah XD. Who loaded the VGA graphics by mistake??

[auragirl.livejournal.com]

For me it's pretty much exactly like in the movies. Everything goes soft and out of focus. Never have static or noise, just areas of color that define things. Blurry.

[dragonimp.livejournal.com]

Hmm, so it's not inaccurate, just not universal. I was wondering if I described something from the point of view of someone with poor vision, whether that's fairly common or just "Hollywood"

[beautiful-fic.livejournal.com]

Blurry for me, but I'm severely short-sighted, so perhaps it used to be staticy and I never noticed? My lenses make it better. I can see objects (TV, sofa, cat, people) but reading text a long way off is something I'll never get back.

B xxx

[dragonimp.livejournal.com]

^_^ It's hard to judge your own vision, because that's just how the world is! But you'd probably notice the static, it's kinda over everything. So it sounds like, even with lenses your distance vision isn't 100% clear? I'm curious how common that is, vs. vision being completely corrected.

[(Anonymous)]

From what I've been told by my opthalmologist, the inability to correct vision back to 100% is quite low without surgery. The more severe the visual problem, the more unlikely 100% restoration will be. It's close (maybe 98%?) but never perfect. I envy people with perfect vision :D

B xxx

[militsa.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting question. I took off my glasses to see XD. Definitely the off-focus thing for me, but I'm pretty damn nearsighted. Glasses don't seem to correct me to 20/20 but contacts do.

I wonder if the quality of the obscured vision is different depending on whether one has an astigmatism or not?

[dragonimp.livejournal.com]

I've wondered that, too. I'm starting to think there are more kinds of vision problems than just nearsighted/farsighted/astigmatism. For one thing, I was told I'm farsighted but from the descriptions I would think I have astigmatism.

I wonder if the "unfocused camera" effect is more of a nearsighted thing?

[fullmetalrose.livejournal.com]

Hmmm interesting question. I cannot wear contacts, I used to but my astigmatism made it feel like a large plastic disc in my eyes all the time. However when I wore contacts I always had blurr problems, glasses not so much.

I have a really bad habit when I go home I take them off and watch TV, granted across the room in the den, not so much in my bedroom and I see fine UNLESS I have to read something on the TV which can be a challenge I am really nearsighted. I do however keep my old pair by my recliner in the den if I need them.

Overall the only time I get blurred vision in my glasses is when my blood sugar is out of whack and I see stars and blurred vision with and without the glasses which is annoying as hell.

[dragonimp.livejournal.com]

That's interesting; I've heard of diabetes causing retinopathy, but it always implied it was a permanent thing, not something that fluctuates with blood sugar levels.

[fullmetalrose.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, now I don't have retinopathy but if my sugar is really high, like when your blood pressure rises, I see blurry and stars, seriously. Today I go to my MD to see if he's gonna change my meds again.

[dormantdrake.livejournal.com]

I'm nearsighted (with astigmatism and no depth perception), and when I don't wear my glasses things past 10-15 feet away get blurry. The further away something is the more... blurred it is. I recall what focusing at that range feels like/looked like, but just *can't* focus on things properly no matter how I try. It's all vague shapes past a certain point, but it doesn't feel wrong, either, nor does it bother me except when I want to read a sign. It's not that things seem out of focus, because it always seems that things are as they should be. When I put on my glasses it actually takes me a bit to adjust to being able to see further and more clearly than I am used to. Close up stuff never changes focus, glasses or no. I've also noticed that as my eyesight has worsened over the years that I'm able to see less and less in the dark, so that now I'm pretty close to blind if you turn off the lights.

I'd say my objection with Hollywood is blurring everything, rather than just the stuff that would be blurred for the particular character. The blurring itself is close enough, though I find it annoying where I don't find my own vision blurring annoying. There must be some difference that I can't quite discern.

Reading through other comments I have never noticed anything like pixels. I just get blurring (it's rather as if past a certain point someone has actually put an out of focus lens between me and whatever I'm looking at). I've never had depth perception and I've apparently always had astigmatism (so I can't aim or judge distances at all) so I don't know how that might affect things. I used to have something like superhuman sharpness, though. Everything was *very* clear and in focus until I reached about fifteen or so and my vision had declined into the normal range. By early twenties I was officially deemed nearsighted and given glasses.

[dragonimp.livejournal.com]

Is the lack of depth perception from your brain ignoring one eye (which was my problem), or from something else, like your eyes not focusing on the same point?

Apparently everyone in Hollywood is astigmatic, never far- or nearsighted ^^;. Neither of which would be *that* hard to portray.

[dormantdrake.livejournal.com]

I don't know what the lack of depth perception is from (no insurance to cover going to the eye doctor, so I only go when my vision has gotten worse *and* I can afford new glasses/lenses). I know I get it from my mother. I can consciously focus on just the input from one eye or the other if I choose, but it doesn't change anything, and I've never had depth perception. (I can go on at length about how much I hate "3D" stuff.) I have *excellent* peripheral vision (part of the reason why wearing glasses when I go outside annoys me), though, and can even focus on stuff in the extreme edge of my vision without shifting my eyes. I suspect it may be related to the odd wiring in my brain.

(Other odd things include: I have to translate my thoughts into words, and what I hear/read into my thoughts, which are very abstract. I read words as shapes, rather than a series of letters, which is why misspelled words annoy me so much. I tend to recognize people by the noises/sounds they make rather than what they look like. I cannot recognize faces at *all*.)

[truly-wished.livejournal.com]

Blurry for me. Glasses help but there are plenty of details I can't see with them and contacts are worse.

[dragonimp.livejournal.com]

Hm; glasses are always portrayed as being these perfect fixes, but it's sounding like they're really not. Mine don't make a noticeable difference in my vision except for preventing eye strain and I was curious how common/uncommon that kind of thing is.