I just picked up this from the Web.


So the comments that you should always wear eye protection when shooting is wise and well stated. In fact, I've certainly seen (and experienced) all sorts of unburnt powder spots, lubricating oil spots, and brass pinging off of my glasses. I probably have to clean them every few range sessions. None of that stuff would I like to get in my eyes much less the more catastrophic things that can happen.

Now, all that being said, it is absolutely the case that the best image quality your eye can get is going to be without anything between your eye and the scope. Both contacts and glasses have varying levels of image distortion, occular warping, and particularly if the glasses are tinted, chromatic aberation. Even glasses that are not perscription will have some aspect of these issues, and certainly any perscription glasses will. If get worse if for some reason your head is shaped or sized so that it is difficult to get your eye to be right at the focal length of lens.

For example, if you wear glasses, look at a flat wall. As you are looking at the wall, without moving your head, look up through the top part of the glasses, then side to side through the sides of the glasses. Then take the glasses off and do the same thing. For most people there is a clearly detectable difference in the apparent flatness of the wall.

Now, think for a minute about how you set up with a rifle on a scope, it is pretty common that you can't get your eyes completely square into the scope and rather are looking through your glasses at an angle. So you will have some distortion. Perscription glasses are worse. This can be particularly noticable in cheaper scopes where the "eye box" of the scope is small. The eye box is the area in front of the scope where your eye can be and get a clear image through the scope. Better quality scopes have more sophisticated lenses to give you more flexibility in positioning to get a good view.

Most good quality scopes will actually allow for a certain amount of diopter adjustment - which is more or less exactly what your glasses do. So, I know several pretty dedicated rifle shooters who have scopes which they have adjusted to their eyes and then just wear non - corrected safety glasses for exactly this reason. Since I mostly shoot pistols I haven't done this, but if I moved to doing alot more rifle shooting I probably would do this as well.