OldSchool-WI wrote:
The eyes are the most important physical tool for photographers. The premium multifocal lens implants are not yet covered by Medicare and members of Congress should be urged to have them included. Certainly near and far vision is needed with cameras and regular glasses are difficult if there is a better way with multi-focal distance implants. Please share you experiences if you have had the multifocals implanted.---
Discussion with my ophthalmologist absolutely ruled them out for me.
Your “visual mind” needs to choose from the multiple choices offered to it by the multifocal implants. It’s a mental issue. In Photoshop terms, your mind needs to continually “post process” multi layers and then “flatten image” about 20 times per second.
For patients who take their vision of the world as literally a view of reality, the mind will play the necessary tricks to ignore the less well-focused images and deal with only the best focused image. That represents a successful outcome.
It was clear to my doctor that as a visual artist I fail to “see the world” and I tend to navigate the world by accepting that I see only an image, not a “substantive reality”. This means that if I were presented with multiple focuses, I would see multiple focuses simultaneously. I would not automatically perceive only the best focus. Think of photographic “focus stacking” gone wrong
My inability to see the world as substantive reality, but always as a representation, an image, is not an eyesight flaw. I would see that way even with perfect eyes. It’s a perceptual phenomenon. It’s a mental mode and I have only that one mode. I have perfect eyesight now, post surgery, at all distances beyond about 3 or 4 feet. But I’m never unaware that I’m seeing an image, an analog of reality. Been that way all my life. And that rules out multifocal implants for me and anyone else like me.
An interview with your doctor may be necessary to ascertain “how you perceive what you see”. As a lifelong visual artist it was a quick verdict for me. I’m “mentally unfit” for multi focal implants. I would have to continuously very consciously make an effort to sort out the images. It would never become automatic.
If somehow I’m failing to communicate to you, show your doctor what I’ve written here and ask him to explain and discuss the issue with you.
The most important take away is that the experience of other patients is of zero value to you. If you understood what I wrote, then you realize that.FWIW I have a simplified version of multi focus, called “monovision”. I have my dominant eye corrected for generally “20/20” (possibly even better than that) and my other eye is intentionally idealized to 18 inches, IOW one eye is nearsighted, but is very sharp at about 16 to 22 inches (that range widens a bit in bright light but it remains nearsighted). “Monovision” is a fairly common patient choice, but not everyone chooses 18 inches.