I spent many weeks in bed this winter.  When I got home from a week in the hospital I had a hard time seeing my computer screen and more-so I could could no longer read in bed.  Scared the crap out of me.  Finally I realized that it was worse when I was wearing contacts, and if I took off my glasses I could read just fine.  Very suddenly my closeup vision was really really bad.  Distance is pretty normal.  Doctor swears it is not related, it's just my age.  According to the Internet (because everything you read on the Internet is true ) you can suddenly need reading glasses.  It seems to have stabilized, but - yes, I need to see my optometrist.  I've now become that old lady peering over the tops of her glasses.

What happens to the "working" eyes now?  I don't do a lot of closeup work (thank god!), but obviously focusing a macro is going to be a challenge.

I see my eye doctor shortly, but I'd like to be prepared if I can.  I never wear glasses when I'm shooting. always contacts.  There is a "progressive" contact lens that you can get (think bifocal).  Does anyone here use progressive lenses?  It seems that sometimes you are prescribed one lens with and one lens without and your brain retrains itself to dominate on one side.  Would I get my "shooting eye" in progressive, OR would I get a diopler?  That's the term isn't it for the focusing attachment for the eye piece on the camera body?  Can you just walk into a camera store and "try them on" or do you have to order one with a prescription?

On the other hand... do progressive lenses interfere with regular shooting?   

Anyone been through this?  Supposedly noone can escape needing reading glasses I just never thought it would happen to me.  I just have to admit that I'm turning into an old lady.  What's next? A hip replacement?  I better not need one before my kids are into braces  .

Thanks, Lorraine

Pixart....I don't have the answer you need...but you bring up a good point I never even thought about. I do wear glasses and tried progressive contact lens a few years back...but because of stigmitism I couldn't get use to them. I never tried shooting with them in so I don't know how that would effect it. Let us know what the eye doctor has to say about it. I usually take my glasses off when I shoot and just have to hope the auto focus is doing it's job.

I feel your pain Lorraine.  You and I must be close in age.  I have always had better than 20/20 vision, but the last year or so my vision is just fried. 

I know the doctor says it isn't related to this work, staring at an LCD all day adjusting images, but I would SWEAR it is. 

Fun part for me is I have one eye that focuses close up and one that focuses far away.  So basically wherever I look it's blurry.   

I got two pairs of glasses to balance the vision.  One is for the computer and the other is for reading.  Know just what you mean about being the old lady peering over the glasses, LOL. 

FWIW, I originally tried getting the progressive lenses rather than the two individual pairs of glasses, but I hated them!  I guess it was just too hard to train my eyes to look through one part or the other when they are used to looking wherever they want.  And the transition area in the middle of the lens looked like walking through a swimming pool.  Horrible! 

I don't need the glasses to shoot because I can just close one eye and look through the viewfinder, so the different focusing eyes aren't an issue.  Have you tried not using the contacts and just using the diopter adjustments to shoot? 

I have myopia, for which I use contact lenses.  Mild stigmatism however prevents it from being a real solution.  I'm starting to have difficult to read at short distance (that age thing...), although this is not often a concern.

Now, I did prefer the old times of focusing with that half-cut circle. I find it really difficult to focus manually in today's cameras, except in very close up subjects.  I never thought this was related to my eye defficiency, but this thread made me wonder.

Vonkara, you must come to Brazil and visit my opthamologist.  He's been taking care of my eyes since I was a child  , and many things changed along the way. Myopia surgery is not applicable to all cases. Today's eyeglasses are not the same as when I used them.

My mother got used very easily with her Varilux glasses, but my father never did, so he used two glasses. You need to learn to use Varilux, because each vertical position will focus in one area, so you have to move your head when previously you only moved your eyes.  Those who adjust to it are very happy. 

But above all, buy quality lenses.  It's even more important than for our cameras.

Yeah, my hands got too short a couple of years ago so my optometrist gave me bi-focal glasses that I never wear , only when I read small font. Like Lisa said I hate my glasses, if my head is straight then everything in front of my feet is out of focus. Can't get use to it.
For photography I don't need it.

This looks promising: http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/video?id=7436477

Oh, these look fabulous!  Well, they don't look very stylish -  but what a fabulous invention!

WOW - can I relate!

I'm 45 and this happened to me too - and pretty much 'all of a sudden' I couldn't read anything upclose with my glasses on.  I'm near sighted, wear glasses fulltime but could always see well both near and far with them on before.  I can now be seen wearing my glasses on my neck to get a good read of something.  There has already been stuff that I can no longer make out (super itsy bisty type) without magnification.  I'm the 'old' women who forgets about my 'neck glasses' and then nearly trips over them when I get up from sitting

I feel for ya Granny 

respectfully snipped...
Pregnancies and child births have been periodes where my eyesight has taken big leaps in the right directions; maybe you should try that cure too?

LOL!
For me, it was a lush head of hair...now, in the grade school age, I'm all grey   Seriously!

I've used glasses since I was 8, because I have myopia. But as I grow older, the myopia has been reducing. I started at -3.5, now I'm down to -1.5. If this trend continues, I can become a fighter pilot in 10 years.

Pregnancies and child births have been periodes where my eyesight has taken big leaps in the right directions; maybe you should try that cure too?

Wow, I knew we could get recovery of our eyesight but not that much. Nice to know

Seems to be going around! I too, had way better than 20/20 my whole life. I turned forty and suddenly the arms can't get long enough. So far ok with shooting, but definitely need the reading glasses at night. Cant wait to hear what the opto says.

My advice is probably very stupid, but my camera has an adjusting wheel that can compensate the problem of myopia. 
 

That never worked for me, I think it's more a fancy feature. There is so much different eyesight problems that it's not enough accurate

Don't know your age but at "just before" 60, I discovered cataracts was the problem.  A simple procedure to remove them and insert a permanent lens and Voila!  I can see.   Or, I could see.  Need to check back with the doc.  Getting harder and harder to see small print an dim light.

Good luck.

Shhhh you said the C word.  My two doctors have phone calls about me and they both keep threatening high doses of prednisone, of course the scariest side effect is cataracts.  More concerned about the possibility of cataracts than the almost certain dissolving bones, weight gain and personality changes that come with Prednisone...   Both my parents had cataracts removed and my sister had them at 50 and I think my brother had his removed this past winter. 

Maybe as a whole we (photographers) worry about our eyes more than the general population.  One of my husband's buddies was taking the escalator up to her office and bam, her vision was gone in one eye and mostly gone in the other.  Just like that.  I know it sounds like an urban legend, but we know her.  Scarrrry.

Funny thing is eyesight. Until the age of 42 I had good eyesight for both distance and reading. Slowly but surely my arms became too short to read a newspaper/book but were still fine for focusing a manual-focus lens. Now, 18 years on, I need a +3 correction (reading glasses) for viewing a monitor and a +1 correction on my DSLR for distant scenes as well as macro shots (35mm slide copying) through a camera. I suspect that viewing through a DSLR is effectively viewing at infinity.
For driving and long-distance vision, I also use  +1 reading glasses. I'm lucky because I don't need to visit an optometrist to purchase hideously expensive bits of plastic with (-) correction lenses...........all (+) correction lenses are available at the druggist or department store for less than �5. In 18 years, my correction for reading glasses has gone from +1 to +3.

This is all as nature intended! As you and wife grow older, it is difficult to see the lines of age appearing on spouse's face, preserving the illusion of youth.