Eyesight and sunlight and bright lights

[Just Jacques]

I just thought I would post this not only for all the target shooters who shoot out of doors but also for those who shoot indoors.

I tell this story against myself, many years ago when I was a member of Baildon shooting club which was a centrefire club, we got some new lights to put down by the targets when shooting at night. I got the brightest light pointing at my target and surprise surprise, I missed the target totally.

When I was shooting at Cardiff in 1989, the Norwegian pistol champion was blacking his sights by having a small fire on a tin lid beside me. He was shooting the next detail an hour and a half later. I know he wasn't doing this deliberately but I'll tell a story just for the record.

I only found out about this, because the chairman of one of the shooting clubs I belonged to was a doctor and apparently if you look at a bright light before you start to shoot it cancels out the purple pigment in your eye, and you get a false sense of direction and all sorts. So if you're blacking your sights with a candle or other item, do leave a quarter of an hour for your eyes to settle down before shooting. I'm thinking about this in a particularly bright weather and I know that many people do wear a peaked cap but don't look at the sun or any bright lights or reflections. This is just a "sideline" which I thought might be helpful to some shooters. I know the lighting is regulated on the indoor ranges, but even so if you're blacking your sights this can apply. I'm just passing on as many tips as I can for the benefit of everybody.
Best wishes to everybody and good scores.
JJ

[antwarrior]

There is no doubt that when shooting outside a change in ambient light either up or down can have a profound effect. Exactly what the biomechanics/chemistry of it is I don't really know but when shooting with iron sights it is important to use an iris or neutral filters to compensate. I have had occasions when the the light has increased and my shots all start dropping to the edge of the 9 ring at seven o'clock, not just the odd one but all of them so it must be affecting my sight picture in some way. Closing down the iris by 0.2 or 0.3 of a mm restores the shot back to the middle.
Like with all target shooting, if things start going wrong don't just keep going in the hope that they will sort themselves out, go back on your sighters and try and put the problem right.