I also agree with educating yourself to protect yourself. However, there will be many holes in your research which a good optometrist should be able to fill in. Together you can make the best choice.

One area I never see discussed, especially from the "I can find my own prescription" crowd, is binocular vision. How your eyes work together at certain distances and with certain tasks will determine not only which prescription you need but also how the spectacles are set. I'm not only talking about setting the PD and lens height (which may need to be different for your right lens compared to your left, at different at all distances). There are many more considerations such as vertex distance, pantoscopic tilt, frame choice, lens material, wrap angle etc.

Sometimes the optical centration is intentionally different from the PD to induce prism to decrease eye strain. This is not uncommon with complex prescriptions and in the older population.

And sometimes there are other solutions such as vision training. Not the woo woo Bates method, but real vision training used to fix real problems.

Good optometrists provide a lot of value. There just way too much information and most patients will be happy to just let them do what is needed.

And sometimes you just need to get off the PC for a bit.

But optician (!= optometrist) generally want to talk to you about frames and not about lenses. This is understandable since they have to make a buck.

So the gap filler here is educating myself. I still let them do what they are in fact very good at but I educate myself on the choices.

This has worked out very well for me. My sister in law has terrible vision and I wonder whether my approach (self-education) would work for her. Maybe, maybe not. But I do think she should get personalized free-form lenses and her optician hasn't suggested that. Dunno why.

I've talked to a ton of people about their phones and apps. I've never talked to someone about lenses. That's strange.

Yes, both progressives and high-index lenses suffer from the same problems: smaller field-of-vision and higher distortion of peripheral vision

If I sit with my eyes 36 inches away from a 30-inch screen...

With a single-vision lens, without my head moving at all, my eyes can move within their sockets to see the bottom corner of screen showing the date & time, and to the top corner showing the [x] button to close windows. Single-vision lenses have edge-to-edge clarity.

With progressives or high-index lenses, it requires rotating & tilting my head to put those corner locations directly in my central field of vision. Imagine a horse with blinkers[1]. The edges of those lenses are blurrier so you have to move your head to move the lens' center spot toward the item of interest for maximum sharpness.

Maximum field-of-vision is the optimal ergonomics of looking at multiple windows of text on a 30" monitor. Yes, high-index lenses are thinner and more fashionable but I don't need that when concentrating on programming code and reading web pages.

>You cannot depend on optometrists+opticians to make the right choice for you. You need to educate yourself on the available choices.

That's why I bought my own set of trial lenses[2]. I can methodically optimize my computer distance vision without exhausting the patience of my optometrist repeatedly asking, "which is better? 1? or 2? (again) 1? or 2?". I then go to Zenni and order the exact diopters I need. (I'm not going to buy a glaucoma tester so I'll still go to the eye doctor for that.)

I end up with 3 separate pairs of single-purpose glasses: 1 for reading books ~12 inches, 1 for computer distance ~36 inches, and 1 for driving 20+ feet. Swapping out glasses for each purpose is inconvenient but the larger field-of-vision makes it worth the hassle.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blinkers_(horse_tack)

[2] http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=trial+lens+set

I'm lucky I guess. I'm myopic with an FD of about 12 inches. So it was really dumb to have progressives with the near FD set to 12 inches.

Returned them for one computer set and one driving (closeup fine) and they work well, but up until now thought they or I did something wrong.

Yes, exactly! Many others have the same issues and describe it in similar ways: "tunnel vision", or "looking through a pinhole"

It's very strange that optometrists & opticians don't explicitly explain this trade-off upfront: the "convenience" of progressive bifocals and the "fashion" of hi-index lenses will always be blurrier away from the center point than single vision lenses. If customers were properly educated ahead of time by the opticians, they wouldn't think progressives and hi-index were "defective". The lenses are not defective -- it's actually an unavoidable optical tradeoff! Your eyes just happen to be sensitive to it.

Some people adjust to progressives or high-index lenses just fine. Others don't. I tried them for 3 weeks as they recommended and never got used to them.

Anyway I wanted to ask about your test lens set. Do you just go to the optician with the glasses? I get the impression they’d give a reaction as if you are self diagnosing from something you’ve read online...

Yes, if your using desktop monitor is 2 or 3 feet away, that's an intermediate distance and neither reading glasses nor driving glasses will provide the optimal sharpness. If your "computer work" is a laptop monitor, a prescription for reading glasses (~12 inches) may also work for that shorter distance.

>Do you just go to the optician with the glasses?

No, I order them online: https://www.google.com/search?q=glasses+online

Those websites let you type in the numerical values for sphere, cylinder, etc. You don't need a prescription. (It's the online contact lens websites that require a faxed prescription or a confirmation phone call with the optometrist.)

If you need a tutorial for how to use a trial lens set, there are lots of youtube videos and text websites explaining SPHERE, CYLINDER, AXIS, ADD, PD, etc. It's really easy.

I used www.zennioptical.com but the others websites have good reviews as well.

If you absolutely must use a local optician such as LensCrafters, EyeMasters, Pearle Vision, Costco, Walmart, etc because you need to try out the frames on your face, a trial lens set isn't going to be as helpful to you.

  Sphere Power: +1.00 to -4.00
  Cylinder Power: +2.00 to -2.00
  Extended Range Available

Look at the online sites and look at the lens choices:

http://www.eyeglasslensdirect.com/SearchResults.asp?Cat=282

So I really like Trivex over standard polycarbonate or plastic.

http://www.eyeglasslensdirect.com/Trivex-Single-Vision-Lense...

You can easily drill Trivex so you can have rimless if you want. Polycarbonate cracks more easily.

So know your prescription and frame type. Learn about lens materials, lens types (single vision, progressives, free form, ...), tints, coatings, .... This seems like a lot to know but imagine your optometrist trying to figure out everything in 20 minutes. It's better if you do some homework.

All that said, I went to Berkeley and I use their School of Optometry. They don't mind at all if I ask questions and if I'm pretty direct.

wait, can you expand on that? i went to ucsd, is there some uc program where alumni get some kind of benefits from the medical programs? or is it just cal?

I don't think there's a reciprocation agreement. There is for library privileges. You can actually join as a UCSD alum. Life is about $750 (it was less when I joined) which has paid for itself for me. I believe there are alumni advantages at UCSF Dental as well.

On their single vision lens order page, there is no input field for fitting height. Do they calculate a fixed percentage of frame height, or can you email them with your fitting height?

This is another online site with a lot of information:

http://www.visio-rx.com/vision-topics/lenses/polycarbonate-v...

http://www.optiboard.com/forums/showthread.php/49935-Free-fo...

I first got into this when I was taking Physics 7C which has a chapter on lenses. There's an approximation they use and I thought couldn't they use ray tracing and do a better job? So I started reading and yeah, they could and they do. What I was wondering about is what free form lenses actually are. And with modern CNC capabilities, you can do a much better job.