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To Lasik or not - Critical Focus Part 2 ? Advice needed.

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LCamak

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I had a good friend scare me years ago about eye correction procedures gone wrong. I kinda need my eyes to make a living - and I DID have a prescription that works. But I am contemplating Lasik again and was looking for some real world advice.

Anybody done it and wish they hadn't? Any other advice on it?

I know that Presbyopia is not solved by procedures yet, but has anyone got some good advice on dealing with that? Yeah, I know, I'm kinda young to be dealing with that at 29.

Please only answer if focus is EXTREMELY CRITICAL to what you do for a living! ...like Cam Ops and Focus pullers. I mean, I can sit and stare at a slightly out of focus computer screen all day and it will have little effect on this email I'm sending.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Best,
lael
 
A buddy of mine, another photographer, was looking into it. They told him he was better off with contacts. The Lasik was going to leave him with a little softer focus in the eyes and they knew he would notice. Of course this story is third hand and now a few years old... but I would caution anyone in our field to really research this out before going under the knife..... er laser.
 
Something I didn't realize until recently, but LASIK is not a permanent fix. Like getting new glasses, over time the procedure will need to be adjusted as your eyes age. I was at a local optician recently and the tech helping me said she had LASIK and it lasted for about ten years. She's back in glasses again. I understand some of the folks at RED have some experience with eyewear, perhaps they might have some insights.
 
My best friend is an optometrist. He says that, as Mark mentions, LASIK is not a permanent solution. Indeed, since the cells in our lenses are alive and grow (very slowly!), there is no such thing as a permanent solution. (This excludes replacement lenses, which carries decidedly negative "side effects," the most important being single focus distance eyeballs!) On the other hand, many professional athletes like golfers and, especially, baseball players swear by the procedure, primarily because they have rather limited professional lives anyway. But it is hard to argue that a cinematographer needs to have "better" vision than a baseball player. I'd definitely argue the opposite.

Stephen
 
Mark Phelan said:
Something I didn't realize until recently, but LASIK is not a permanent fix. Like getting new glasses, over time the procedure will need to be adjusted as your eyes age. I was at a local optician recently and the tech helping me said she had LASIK and it lasted for about ten years. She's back in glasses again. I understand some of the folks at RED have some experience with eyewear, perhaps they might have some insights.
Click to expand...

Like everything else in/on our bodies, our eyes change over time. They will continue to age and still suffer muscle degradation, cataracts, etc..

I don't know anyone who has had lasik or similar procedure done who has regretted it. My brother is a great example. He first had it done 20 years ago... He's extremely far-sighted with an astigmatism. At the time, the proper astigmatic correction and the amount of overall correction he needed was not FDA approved here in the states. So, my family took him to Canada. We took a family trip and did the lasik procedure on both of his eyes at the end. They warned him it would be quite painful due to the amount of correction he needed, but he didn't think it was that bad once it was done. Within a few days he was doing great. He went from needing thick "coke-bottle" glasses he had been wearing since before he was 2 years old to not needing glasses at all. He tried contacts for a brief period before the lasik procedure, but they were awkward and painful due to the amount of correction needed. Only rather thick, 'hard' contacts were available for him and didn't get him all the way to where his glasses could. The Canadian doctors who performed his procedure also used him as a case study and wanted him back if he ever needed any further correction.

About 6 years after that, we returned for a touch-up. He could have done it here locally at that time, but decided to go back to the other doctors... The second time around was quick and easy. His eyes held for 10+ years. He's been wearing glasses again now for the past couple years, but the amount of correction is very minor. One issue he does have, and is typical for those who have lasik done multiple times, is there starts to be some formation of internal scar tissue. Not anything to concern himself over now, but both the doctors in Canada and his eye doctor here in the states have warned him that it could become a problem if he does the procedure a couple more times. He's talking about doing it again, and it should be a minor correction, but probably once he's 40... That's in 6 years.

My wife also had lasik done about 5 years ago. Her eyes changed on her while in her early 20's... But stabilized and she waited until after kids to do it. At the doctor's request, apparently pregnancy can occasionally alter womens' vision. But nothing changed with her. She's had 20/20 or slightly better vision in both eyes and holding steady.

Also, as we age, there are various factors which contribute to the decline in our vision. Lasik can't address all of them... Can't help me. I've always had perfect vision, but it has degraded noticeably in the past few years. I'm still better than 20/20 reading the chart. Most days I can read the 20/10 line without any trouble, if I'm not fighting my dry eye issue and have had enough sleep. So the eye doc gives me a sympathetic pat on the back and tells me to deal with it, eventually I'll be a mere 20/20 mortal just like everyone else. Same thing happened to her...

I don't think a cinematographer "needs" perfect vision as much as people in other professions. I've seen many cinematographers with less than perfect vision, we're talking more about art here... I would think perfect vision to be far more critical to people like pro baseball players, fighter pilots, police officers / military, brain surgeons...
 
All good feedback and stories. Please keep it up. My eyeglass prescription is corrected to 20/10, but a hot sweaty Atlanta summer is making it hard to keep the specs clean.

Natural 20/10 vision Jeff!!! Really?? - I might begin to dislike you. Life's just not fair. Yeah a cinematographer might not need perfect vision, but they sure expect us Cam ops to have it.

Still interested if someone cares to share a negative story as well about Lasik. Also interested in how to deal better with Presbyopia. Yeah, Mark busted me in a pm on the age thing. Ok, so I'm 30 and not 29 anymore.

-Thanks again,
lael
 
I recommend looking at the information for corrective vision surgery for pilots.

Air Force Medical Service

Aviator Web - "Vision Correction for Pilots"

These resources are of course not tailored to our profession, but there are a hell of a lot more pilots than professional cinematographers, and there is more at stake when they go to work - especially in military aviation. The various flight agencies and militaries around the world have done a lot of study into these procedures.

Of interest, as of just 2007, the US Air Force no longer sees LASIK as a cause for automatic disqualification from flight status. Your post operative vision must still meet their standards for uncorrected vision and must be correctable to 20/20 or better.

For myself, I choose contact lenses. My vision is about 20/10 with correction, which is far better than I am likely to get with corrective surgery.

I use disposable two week contacts. When I am shooting, I carry many sets of contacts with me. I remove them every 7 days, or sooner if needed, and dispose of them rather than cleaning and replacing them. Off set I replae them when soaking them in solution overnight stops being effective at restoring comfort. Depending on the lenses this could be from three weeks to several months.

There is a very slight blue color shift with contact lenses which are visibility tinted. (that is to say most contact lenses) On set this doesn't matter much to me, in post I set my monitors to be slightly redder than true calibration requires. This calibration is unnecessary unless you have at least a 10 bit display panel. (You can use a LUT of course.)
 
I had laser correction in 2005, when I was 45, and am very happy with it. I had worn contacts for about 20 years, but my eyes were starting to become a little drier and contacts weren't as comfortable. Presbyopia had also started to become a factor, which meant that I needed reading glasses to see up close if I had contacts in. I decided that I'd rather be able to see distances without glasses or contacts, even if that meant I'd always need glasses to see up close.

The procedure itself is terrifying for about 20 seconds on each eye. They gave me a teddy bear to squeeze, and I made good use of it! Then I had to lie around for a couple of days without rubbing my eyes. That was all there was to it.

When shooting, I just have to make sure I have a pair of readers on a lanyard around my neck. I've always preferred pressing my eye up against the EVF, and the diopter is more than adequate for my eye. But I need to put on the readers to see the buttons and knobs on the camera. In fact I have a rule for myself that I have to put on readers before plugging anything in on the camera. Otherwise I'll find myself trying to put the power cord into the drive connection, or not getting the key on the Lemo plug lined up. Operating camera off an LCD also requires glasses. I doubt it will ever be an issue for me again, but I discovered that checking the gate on a motion picture camera by looking down a long lens or a zoom did not require the readers--I guess the camera lens provides the correction in that case.

When editing I use a weaker pair of readers to get the computer screen in focus comfortably. I tend to take off the readers and back up to watch the edit end-to-end. By the way, cheap drugstore readers have always worked for me.

For me the biggest reasons to get the laser correction are not so much production-related: it's fun to be able to jump into a pool, or go rafting, or go backpacking without having to fuss with contacts.

Hope that helps.
 
I sould say the best reason to have Lasik would be to correct severe astigmatism and or near sightedness. It won't help presbyopia anyway.
I have made my living with my eyes and personally I would not consider any surgical procedure on them unless it was an absolute medical necessity. Even though the risk of a bad outcome is slight, it is not 0.

Though I haven't bought a pair yet, I like this solution for presbyopia. Bit expensive for now.
http://www.superfocus.com/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpcsearch&utm_content=sfofficial&utm_campaign=gsuperfocus

My next pair will likely be another set of progressives on Hoodman Photographers frames.
http://www.hoodmanusa.com/prodinfo.asp?number=HPF1
Even if I had really good vision I would generally wear glasses for UV protection anyway.
 
Any elective surgical procedure must be considered very carefully. As an ex-optometrist, I still prefer to wear contact lenses, daily disposables in my case. If neither specs nor contact lenses are a practical solution, then your options become limited and a more aggressive approach may now be more viable. Do your homework and visit a few centers that offer LASIK to get a feel for which ones seem more professional as standards do differ quite a bit from clinic to clinic. Good luck on your decision.
 
Stephen Pruitt said:
But it is hard to argue that a cinematographer needs to have "better" vision than a baseball player. I'd definitely argue the opposite.
Click to expand...

Depends on your definition of better and the problem domain.

I think that a cinematographer needs to have corrected vision, with glasses or contacts, of 20/20 or better. A baseball player just needs to see a ball and its motion. (translation and rotation) They can probably get by with uncorrected vision of 20/50 or so.

A cinematographer should be seeing fine details in the scene and in their finder. The finder can be calibrated very finely of course with diopters as needed. But you still have to be able to see the details of the scene from the camera position. The upside, is that glasses or contacts are great under most circumstances.

An athlete typically has to see under more diverse conditions, so they need better uncorrected vision. In this case by uncorrected vision I mean without glasses or contacts. When I was a youth, I played hockey without glasses (and I wasn't allowed to get contacts until I was 18).

Now there is a crossover. A combat cameraman, or other extreme condition photographer (I'm thinking of Fireman Mike Ross) needs both flexibility and precise vision in a different way that a studio cinematographer. A basketball player needs vision in a different way than a sharpshooter.

A fighter pilot (after flight training) needs 20/50 or better uncorrected vision, and that vision must be correctable (with glasses or contacts) to 20/20 or better. So in that circumstance, LASIK surgery that results in 20/40 vision that can be corrected with contact lenses to 20/20 is a success, but LASIK surgery that corrects vision to 20/25 but can not be improved with glasses/contacts is a failure.

An average human can have corrected vision of 20/16. 5% of LASIK surgeries result in a reduction of that "best corrected vision" two lines on the vision chart to 20/40 or so.

As I wrote above, I can see 20/10 with contacts. I actually see 20/8 in my right eye. I can actually see better than that if I get lenses that correct for astigmatism, but those drive me crazy. I feel pretty blind when I'm wearing lenses that get me to "just" 20/20. I usually trash my contacts when I can see "just" 20/15 or 20/16. It makes little sense for me to risk LASIK

OK ... so I'm going on. All I really want to say is that its more complicated than you imply.
 
Mike Yonts said:
For me the biggest reasons to get the laser correction are not so much production-related: it's fun to be able to jump into a pool, or go rafting, or go backpacking without having to fuss with contacts.
Click to expand...

For the pool I use goggles. For hiking etc I find it doesn't matter. Slap in some two week disposables and off you go. I haven't been "in the field" that long in decades, but its pretty easy to get your hands clean once every week or so and swap lenses if needed.

Of course, what lenses you can wear, and your level of care needs changes that dramatically.

This is a good thread. I like revisiting this issue from time to time, and it turns out this is a good time.
 
Alexander Ibrahim said:
I think that a cinematographer needs to have corrected vision, with glasses or contacts, of 20/20 or better. A baseball player just needs to see a ball and its motion. (translation and rotation) They can probably get by with uncorrected vision of 20/50 or so.
Click to expand...

A professional baseball player needs to have better vision than 20/50, especially if you're a hitter. You don't just have to see the ball and it's motion, you need to be able to see the laces on the ball when batting. The way the laces are spinning tells you what type of pitch has been thrown. The best hitters in baseball usually have the best vision.
 
VERY constructive posts, thanks. Please keep it up.

I did find a good doctor here in Atlanta that does the pro athletes, but I find myself leaning towards keeping the contacts / glasses.

Switching subjects to presbyopia, I have some good progressive glasses that correct it, but a problem I have sometimes is when the LCD is above my head - then its more trouble to get the reader part (at the bottom of the glasses) up to where I can see. Contacts and readers solve that, but contacts aren't always the easiest solution. Any ideas on solving this another way? (Pushing me towards a better monitor and wireless video & FFocus)

BTW, I find when I'm operating - I prefer contacts and then use the VF for correction, but when pulling focus/ACing, I prefer the Progressives.

Thanks,
lael
 
Wow, good thing I'm married. Those Hoodman's won't get me any dates. Interesting idea though and definitely (and unfortunately) under consideration.
 
I'm not real fond of progressive lenses either. A real neck strainer in many conditions.
I really like the Superfocus variable glasses I shared the link to above, just can't afford them at the moment. Full field of focus at any distance. Rack focus for eyeballs.:coolgleamA:
 
Brad Webb said:
A professional baseball player needs to have better vision than 20/50, especially if you're a hitter. You don't just have to see the ball and it's motion, you need to be able to see the laces on the ball when batting. The way the laces are spinning tells you what type of pitch has been thrown. The best hitters in baseball usually have the best vision.
Click to expand...

Sharp focus is not the only category of "vision quality." I agree that better hitters have better vision ... but better in what way you should ask.

You only need to see the motion ... the laces are a "tell" to rotation, or spinning, but you don't really need to see the laces: just the way they move. It's actually a different property of vision separate from focus.

As a pro hockey player I had similar issues with watching the puck. To this day I can still see it well enough without vision correction. You just don't need to see sharp detail in focus, but you have to have a keen sense of motion and fast reaction times.

The most important thing isn't in focus detail, but rather seeing the direction of the motion blur. Try it your self. Stick a camera behind some glass and throw balls at it with camera at 60p and the lens set to infinity, CF and trying to follow focus. You'll see it hardly matters where the focus is, you can still easily see the direction of the balls rotation. In fact, humans have better motion sensitivity slightly away from the central "in focus" portion of our vision.

As a player the problem is being sensitive to that information, and having the reaction time to make use of the information.

Now as an ice hockey player I had to also watch the ice surface itself as the games wore on. That does require seeing sharp detail. You often have to skate differently because there is a new rut cut in the ice. Little alterations of stride or timing of a turn.

I also had to dynamically respond to little signals and cues from team mates, and when I could decipher them the opposition ... you need moderately sharp focus for that, enough to make out the motion in question is all though.

Going back to baseball ... you have to be sensitive to the pitchers body and motion before and during the pitch as well. Now that requires more sharp focus, but still not more than ordinary. You also need sharp vision to help find the ball (or the puck) when its lost in the lights, and such, but fast light-dark adaptation helps more.

DISCLAIMER: I got nowhere near as far in baseball as I did in hockey ... but a lot of guys I skated with did so I kept learning way past where I could play.
 
I hemmed and hawed on this issue for awhile, too. It scared me, the thought of doing this to my eyes- what if my vision was permanently messed up and I wouldn't be able to work on set?

Then, I did a show where it was so hot and sweaty that I went through two sets of contacts in a day. And then, I did a show where I was in the water- oops! Lost a ton of contacts, and my coke bottle thick glasses just weren't cutting it at all.

I had Lasik in LA, from a doc who does sports guys and supposedly a ton of film guys, too. They warned me:

1) Nothing's permanent
2) I'll maybe need readers anyway

Well, that was 3 years ago. No readers, which is good (I'm way too young for that look, yet!). And my vision is REALLY GOOD so far.

My prescription was incredible before this. 20/650+ I think (I don't remember the exact numbers). When I woke up, I couldn't read an alarm clock unless I was 4 inches away from it. I'm talking the big red glow-y numbers ones.

Now, I will say my super-up-close vision was awesome. In olden days, I could have worked as a watchmaker, I think :-).

The world seems so much more alive to me, now, post-Lasik. I highly recommend it, if you're a good candidate for the procedure.

The process: for me, the prep room was scary. You lie there, and your eyeball is cut. Then you walk to the laser room (in my case, your mileage may vary). I couldn't see a thing. All milky white nothingness. Very scary to me. Then you're strapped in, and the laser gets to work. You hear a "dit dit dit" sound as it burns away the flesh. You smell it, too, if you have a lot to laser.

Keep in mind, I needed a lot of correction.

After, I stumbled to the car with help from my girlfriend. I went to bed, and slept a whole day. Good drugs!

I woke up, and couldn't see very well at all. That scared me a lot! After a day, I could see well enough to work my Mac. Sorta. When we went out, the light hurt my eyes. I saw halos. Even a few days later, I could not read labels on the cans at Ralph's. Totally terrifying.

And then, I woke up one day and the world was BEAUTIFUL. It looked like HD after, well, tv snow (remember that?). I could count leaves on a tree.

I still had some issues for a few weeks, especially at dusk. But they cleared up as I healed.

Today, I cannot imagine the day to do b.s. I was going through just to see. For about 4 months, I was super grateful to the universe for my newfound sight.

Then, like spoiled people everywhere, I began to take my sight mostly for granted. It's just normal to me, now, to be able to see very, very well without any sort of corrective lenses.

So that's my story. I'm a believer, but it took a lot of datapoints and soul searching to do it.

And yes, it has really helped me on set, too.
 
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