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Light direction and ranging accuracy

Of recent I’ve been experimenting with how the direction of sunlight affects target faceplate ranging Accuracy. This issue affects the shooter - regardless of how expensive their scope is.
What I’ve learned may seem obvious to old timers, but it’s new to me, so I thought I’d share this information, in case others are struggling with the same thing.
A quick summary is:
when the light is at your back and more directly illuminating a faceplate in front of you, wow, ranging is easy And much more accurate = extreme clarity.
BUT
Put the sunlight at a right angle to the shooter or worse directly behind the object being ranged, and ranging distance accurately can become nearly impossible.

My understanding as to why this happens is because when the sunlight is coming more directly towards your eyes, your pupils are trying to constrict and if you are trying to look through the darkness of a scope, you need or want your pupils dilated to allow maximum light in for good faceplate definition.

Some shooters deal with this via ocular eyecups which don’t work if you wear glasses and some wear huge brimmed hats and I’ve seen some people throw a big towel over their heads and scope.

I certainly can’t affect the path of the sun and its a very real frustration and it causes me a lot of missed shots.

Wondering what and how the best shooters deal with this.

Chances of getting someone to follow me around with a big umbrella is probably against the rules 🙄
 
Of recent I’ve been experimenting with how the direction of sunlight affects target faceplate ranging Accuracy. This issue affects the shooter - regardless of how expensive their scope is.
What I’ve learned may seem obvious to old timers, but it’s new to me, so I thought I’d share this information, in case others are struggling with the same thing.
A quick summary is:
when the light is at your back and more directly illuminating a faceplate in front of you, wow, ranging is easy And much more accurate = extreme clarity.
BUT
Put the sunlight at a right angle to the shooter or worse directly behind the object being ranged, and ranging distance accurately can become nearly impossible.

My understanding as to why this happens is because when the sunlight is coming more directly towards your eyes, your pupils are trying to constrict and if you are trying to look through the darkness of a scope, you need or want your pupils dilated to allow maximum light in for good faceplate definition.

Some shooters deal with this via ocular eyecups which don’t work if you wear glasses and some wear huge brimmed hats and I’ve seen some people throw a big towel over their heads and scope.

I certainly can’t affect the path of the sun and its a very real frustration and it causes me a lot of missed shots.

Wondering what and how the best shooters deal with this.

Chances of getting someone to follow me around with a big umbrella is probably against the rules 🙄
The Bisley eyecups can be hard to find but work well with glasses, even with my oversized shop teacher safety glasses. Takes some work to get the angle and eye relief adjusted but helps me block the sun without the hat causing me to sweat. As a bonus, your eye is always in the same spot and eliminates parallax errors
 
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Maybe try and range something as close to the target as possible that you can see clearly through the scope for ranging purposes....
Distance Not the issue - it’s as I said, related to pupils constricting do to incoming sunlight while pupil needs to dilate looking through a darker field within the scope. The angle of the direct or reflective sunlight entering eyes is the problem; distance to target being ranged is not relative, although targets from 10-35 yards are always easier at 16x
 
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The Bisley eyecups can be hard to find but work well with glasses, even with my oversized shop teacher safety glasses. Takes some work to get the angle and eye relief adjusted but helps me block the sun without the hat causing me to sweat. As a bonus, your eye is always in the same spot and eliminates parallax errors
I have some I bought from David Slade of Airgun Werks, I’ll give them a try = again.
 
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