Postby Rob Armstrong » Wed 01 Feb 2006 12:26 am
I ended up causing a bit of a stir at the hospital last week when I took them with me and asked if, just out of curiosity, I could use them instead of the pin hole thing they use when giving me a vision test. I wanted to judge properly how good they are as, to be honest, I was quite disappointed when I received them.
The nurse was intrigued and said OK and asked where I'd got them from etc. After sitting back down in the corridor the nurse said I had a couple of people before me and that she had told the doctor about my pinhole glasses and they all wanted to see them. Next thing I know I was called in almost immediately, with 3 students as well as the doctor in the room!
They all tried them, with one student describing looking through them as akin to "insect vision".
I was told that an elderley gentleman had begged and pleaded for the hospital to let him keep the pinhole "mask" thing they use when testing vision, so people such as him would no doubt be extremely grateful to receive a pair of these eyetrainers - so I gave them the website address to pass on, hopefully a friend or relative can get him a pair.
There is no doubt they do work to some extent, with my ungrafted eye I can make out a few lines on the chart with them (as opposed to it being a blurry light without) and with my grafted eye I can see the individual pixels on my phone screen etc, also the ghosting disappears and regular text looks really black rather than washed-out grey.
BUT it only works if you are looking directly through a pinhole (obviously) which means you have to keep adjusting what you are looking at everytime your eye moves - like when reading more than a few lines of text on a screen or page for example.
I find that I have to turn my head slightly so that I am looking at things straight on with my right (good) eye.
I find I get a bit disorientated if I try to walk or move my head quickly with them on.
But after all they are just intended as a replacement for reading glasses, not as a miracle fix for the complex distortions of KC - so I guess it is unfair to expect too much of them.
Although the actually frames of my eyetrainers are perfectly good, the lenses weren't what I was expecting from the description on the website. They're tacky looking shiny black plastic (presumably to make it look more like regular sunglasses) with the pinhole pattern in them.
Maybe I just misread something but I was expecting normal sunglasses with the pinhole pattern BEHIND the lens. Not just so they look more normal, but also so there is still wind/dust protection not to mention UV protection etc.
I was thinking this may be because the pinholes can't be tinted in any way for the effect to work properly, but perhaps it might be better to have a mirrored lens with a pinholed film applied to the back, or maybe just sell pinholed film that can be applied to an individual's choice of sunglasses?
Rob.