Blacker isn't better?

[Lougle]

I had my eyes tested yesterday. Standard 'Is it better with 1, 2, or about the same?' stuff. The optician said that I 'chase the negative' so I always choose the option that is smaller and darker. I was puzzled and said that I thought the darker the black, the clearer it is, so 'better'. He said that some people 'chase the negative' so it's easy for an inexperienced optician to overcorrect their sight.

Why don't they tell you what 'better' means from the outset, and why isn't blacker better?

I've also been told myopes have to be reined in because we always want our vision over-corrected. It's that lovely crisp clear tiny sharpness 😍

Basically with short sighted people if you add minus power until it’s clear, and then show them another -0.25 on top it will just start to look smaller and blacker (minus power lenses make things look smaller), which they may interpret as being clearer. Actually though they can see the letter just as clear without it.

If the person is quite young, being overcorrected won’t usually affect them, but usually the overcorrection will be dropped from the prescription as they get older and it’s too much hard work to look through it all the time.

To be honest, this is just something an experienced optometrist does without thinking too much and without really needing to highlight it to you, but maybe they just wanted to explain why your prescription decreased.

To the person asking how the optician can tell - it’s just a matter of judgement and experience. (Although you can get it wrong occasionally!)

Thank you! I'm hoping my migraines will decrease, although the optometrist said that it will take a couple of weeks to get used to the new glasses and that I might think they're worse at first.

It is a bit strange that they don’t explain what they mean at the outset

I think it might be a personality flaw on my part. I'm not very good at taking things at face value and like to understand the 'why'. That means that I can overthink and get in a terrible muddle. It's very stressful. DH loves eye tests.

But they do. "Better" is a very personal thing. And some, like OP, my Dh etc, are the outliers, people who need more explanation because 'better' is too amorphous.

A good optician will catch them quite quickly but they can go for a while with overly strong prescriptions. It took a while for DH as it was his first time in glasses and he chose the clearer colours rather than sharper lettering. Optician caught him the second time.

Yes - people are all different! You explain things depending on relevance/need/interest of the patient/their ability to understand etc.

Also - I would never say “better.” I say “clearer” or “clearer and blacker” or “clearer and rounder” depending on which bit I’m doing.

You sound as clear as my optician. DH goes somewhere else, through work. He is never sure what he is being asked. I am trying to persuade him to change...

I am still not getting this. The only thing (apart from the red/green - and even that isn't about how red or green) that I care about is how clear the thing I am looking at is - I don't perceive (see) any difference at all in the blackness of letters or symbols - they are either clear or blurred, that's it. It has never occured to me.

This makes a lot of sense to me - my optician before my current one was trying to make me take a very slightly weaker prescription, but I hate it :) She's an excellent optician though, so probably right.

The problem is that words aren't good enough to properly convey nuances of perception. Ideally I'd consent to a neural link with my optometrist so they could see through my eyes while they refract me, rather than go through fifteen minutes of "one, two, or better without" while breathing on each other.

(Also, it would help them understand why I get antsy when my glasses are outside my arm's reach and am reluctant to hand them over to be put God knows where while they're testing me; with 11D of myopia and 2D of astigmatism, you might as well say "just popping your feet over here for you!" NO I need them accessible at all times thank you)

That's my dream!

Sometimes, for example, the actual dots might seem clearer, but there are streaks coming away from them (down and to the right). So the dots that aren't as clear, might be 'better' because there is no streak. It's not straightforward.

Do you mention the streaks? That might be astigmatism that needs correcting.

Yes, I have a significant astigmatism and also have a minor prism.

I just assumed everyone panic guessed at the answers while the giant lenses are shoved in at speed until you reach the “I don’t know, the same?!” wail at which point you win and they take the uncomfortable glasses off you and you can go and have a bun.

Oh prism confuses me. Prescribing it seems to be even more of a dark art than everything else. I started going to a fancy opticians which had all kinds of tests I'd never done before. One of her tests included something like projecting lines everywhere(?) and she said her test suggested I should need a nice hefty prism correction, but that I seemed to see fine without it, and it's never been done again It's all a mystery 🤣

They're always really slow and gentle with me and give me plenty of time to prevaricate! Perhaps you give off too much of an impression of confident competence, pelargoniums?

They do always find something new to tell me off for, though.

Last time, it was looking over my glasses to see things up close. This is Naughty because I'm not practising close convergence, so I must spend part of each day looking at the end of a pencil close-up through my glasses. I did not start doing that.

Eurgh, these tests really annoy me. I'm generally an indecisive person anyway, but some of them are so hard to tell... One might be better in that it's darker so more visible, but the other might be very slightly sharper but greyer... It really confuses my brain!

You'd think in this day and age, they would have a better way to assess this than someone's judgement...

The problem is that someone's judgement is part of the system they're testing. They can use the autorefractor (the machine that shows you a hot air balloon usually I think?) to just test the optical properties of your eyes, and I guess in the future those could get better and more sophisticated, but a lot of your vision happens in your brain and the only interface we really have with that is talking to it 😔

Well you learn something everyday. Never heard that phrase at all. It just so happens I'm at the optitians tomorrow for a 2 yearly check. I shall listen with interest to what instructions I'm given.

I can't figure out the 'blacker' part either! I look for sharper and clearer, after all I want to read something so that will need both!

I had an odd experience at the optician's a few years back, after having Bell's Palsy. During that time my left eye was very irritated and I had to keep it covered all day with an eye patch (for 2 months!). As a result, my weaker right eye had to do all the work. It didn't like it! Those 2 months were quite miserable. Anyhoo, when I'd recovered I went for an eye test, and the optometrist told me that my eyesight had improved in my right eye! Because of keeping the other one covered. I was amazed, I said is that permanent? Yes, I was told.

Fast forward to my latest eye test last month, a few years later. I recounted the Bell's Palsy tale (by now this was a different optometrist, same practice) and she said, no, your eyes can't improve like that, it only happens in children! So I am wondering why on earth was I told it had improved if it hadn't? It baffles me. My eye tests don't show any improvement, either, I checked back some years. So peculiar.

It's the peripheral vision test with the light spots that I hated.
I was very short sighted (pre cataract op) and without glasses I couldn't see the light spots unless they were very bright.
The test was usually supervised by a junior rather than the optician and you could see them getting anxious when minutes passed without me pressing the button.
I haven't gone blind, you're just expecting too much of my uncorrected sight.