You take a whole load of photos in a session, and I guess you do so mostly with one eye closed. After you've done you upload the photos to the computer and try to look through them but your previously-closed eye is all squinty and blurred still and you can't see anything.
How long does/should this Squint-Eye Syndrome last and is there anything you can do to minimise it?
Mine's still in effect some 30 minutes after my session.
And can I win a prize for oddest discussion topic?
yes you should get a prize for oddest discussion topic!
i actually had a mini discussion with my mum after our sunday afternoon shoot, and she didnt seem to get it. i get all blurry and find it hard to refocus on anything thats not through the camera lens, but only for a few minutes. so by the time i get home to edit, it is totally gone. 30 mins seems a long time, how long do you shoot for? I reckon you should go see an optomotrist ;)
Oh my goodness! I had this syndrome last week when I spent almost 5 1/2 hours squinting while waiting for a caterpillar to form its chrysalis LOL. It lasted for hours afterward!
It's even worse when you need to wear glasses. I'm short sighted so I can see fine but I'm very slightly blurry long distance... Normally it's OK, and doesn't make much difference cos it's so slight. However, this becomes a problem as I can't wear glasses and look through the camera and I'm always worried when I get that exciting shot that it's gonna come out slightly soft!! It's happened to me before! lol. looked focussed til I get it up on my computer!
The longer you squint, the longer it takes to recover. For me, alarm bells would ring if I woke up the next day and it was still the same. Otherwise, I don't think you have anything to worry about. :)
I can't use screens, I find I wobble too much to adjust the lens holding the camera away from me lol! And I find I can't see what I'm focussing on as well. My DSLR is an old 'un anyway and it has an LCD screen but not a live view option which kinda suits me anyway lol
i usually try to have both eyes open.. that's difficult to do when the image is still on your lcd screen.. try to wait for it to turn black again before shooting.. but when I'm trying to capture successive photos (especially with moving subjects), I don't have any choice but to squint.. and yes it gets blurry after some time but it goes away in a few minutes. i think 30 mins is a bit long..
This happened to me yesterday and I panicked and woke my boyfriend up lol. It only lasted about half an hour or so, but I didn't like it one bit. I have the same problem as Cookii, too, with wearing glasses for short sightedness and not being as focused as I think.
I suppose he could keep swapping eyes so both eyes are blurry and it'd look normal??? That said if steve wanted that, he could just use my advice above :)
so I know exactly what you are talking about but to be honest I forgot all about it... after a while of shooting my eye just got use to it I guess, I no longer get that feeling.
Now that I think about it, I'm more relaxed when shooting so maybe I'm not shutting my eye so hard?
Righto, let's see if I can help. Whenever you focus on anything up close, you exert three units of focusing power inside your eye - that's bog-standard whether you wear glasses or not. Now if you're short-sighted, and focusing on something up close, you not only have to exert those three units, but also whatever the value of your prescription is too! The reason for this is because most short-sighted people, unless their prescription is large or has additional components, have pretty good near vision and don't actually need their glasses on for near viewing.
So whenever you're looking down your lens at something up close and you've got your short-sighted correction on, you're exerting a whacking amount of focus. If you're doing this for a prolonged period, you get something known as accommodative adaptation, where your eye gets comfy in its focused-up state. This happens with things like prolonged reading and stuff like that. Now each of your eyes has the ability to exert focus independently, so if you shut one eye and look down a lens for ages, your open eye will enter accommodative adaptation, but your closed eye won't. So when you open both eyes, you'll have one eye focused for one distance and the other for another distance. And ta-da, blurry vision that takes a while to go away!
Depending on how much focus you had to exert in the first instance, how old you are and how close your object of focus was, it'll take a while for your eye to relax back into its normal state. It'll sort itself out eventually, but if you find it's a persistent annoyance and affecting your ability to take photos, you're best off either alternating the eye to look through the lens with, removing your short-sighted correction for closeup shots and jockeying the corrector wheel at the top of your viewfinder screen to get yourself a clear image, or looking into the distance periodically to relax your eyes.
The other thing as well is that when you're shutting one eye, you're depriving yourself of binocular vision, the ability to use your eyes together as a pair. If you're shutting your eye for long periods it will take a little while for the brain to go 'oh, I have this eye back again' and integrate the visual input from it properly, so even if the vision's not blurred, your sight may feel a little bit peculiar for a while afterwards. Again, it shouldn't cause any longterm problems, but if you've got a preexisting squint or muscle imbalance of your eyes and you're doing this regularly it might give you symptoms in the form of eyestrain or double vision.
If you have any worries about your eyes following monocular activities like that it's worth seeing your local optician for a checkup.
While I have your attention Miss Piano, and as you seem familiar with eye mechanics, would you be agreed that the current fad for 3D TV is rather dangerous, due to the way it causes your eyes to shift focus?
Not a big problem - bit wasted on people with squints though XD The 3D glasses are polarised such that you can still view the film as it should be, just things'll be a little off-position.
What I mean is, I read that the way the eye tries to focus on something that isn't actually closer messes up with some of the muscles/internals up there that are used to moving focus at the same time as distance, or something.
Shouldn't think so, it may possibly make things a little blurry initially as the accommodation-convergence relationship isn't quite right, but the brain's pretty good at modifying to suit :)
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i actually had a mini discussion with my mum after our sunday afternoon shoot, and she didnt seem to get it. i get all blurry and find it hard to refocus on anything thats not through the camera lens, but only for a few minutes. so by the time i get home to edit, it is totally gone. 30 mins seems a long time, how long do you shoot for? I reckon you should go see an optomotrist ;)
My solution is that next time it happens, just start drinking until the blurryness seems natural :) Problem solved!
Now that I think about it, I'm more relaxed when shooting so maybe I'm not shutting my eye so hard?
Awesome topic!
The blue peter badge in the post for oddest topic. (only UK will get this joke)
So whenever you're looking down your lens at something up close and you've got your short-sighted correction on, you're exerting a whacking amount of focus. If you're doing this for a prolonged period, you get something known as accommodative adaptation, where your eye gets comfy in its focused-up state. This happens with things like prolonged reading and stuff like that. Now each of your eyes has the ability to exert focus independently, so if you shut one eye and look down a lens for ages, your open eye will enter accommodative adaptation, but your closed eye won't. So when you open both eyes, you'll have one eye focused for one distance and the other for another distance. And ta-da, blurry vision that takes a while to go away!
Depending on how much focus you had to exert in the first instance, how old you are and how close your object of focus was, it'll take a while for your eye to relax back into its normal state. It'll sort itself out eventually, but if you find it's a persistent annoyance and affecting your ability to take photos, you're best off either alternating the eye to look through the lens with, removing your short-sighted correction for closeup shots and jockeying the corrector wheel at the top of your viewfinder screen to get yourself a clear image, or looking into the distance periodically to relax your eyes.
The other thing as well is that when you're shutting one eye, you're depriving yourself of binocular vision, the ability to use your eyes together as a pair. If you're shutting your eye for long periods it will take a little while for the brain to go 'oh, I have this eye back again' and integrate the visual input from it properly, so even if the vision's not blurred, your sight may feel a little bit peculiar for a while afterwards. Again, it shouldn't cause any longterm problems, but if you've got a preexisting squint or muscle imbalance of your eyes and you're doing this regularly it might give you symptoms in the form of eyestrain or double vision.
If you have any worries about your eyes following monocular activities like that it's worth seeing your local optician for a checkup.
Hope that helps!
While I have your attention Miss Piano, and as you seem familiar with eye mechanics, would you be agreed that the current fad for 3D TV is rather dangerous, due to the way it causes your eyes to shift focus?