I agree. If you’re bothering the optician about lens type and all that, you should buy from them.

I don’t. I just need my prescription checked and my annual eye health checks, and I’ll be out of there.

Personally my experience has been that opticians usually try to steer me into ridiculously expensive options that I do not need. I’m perfectly happy with simple $50 progressive lenses. The last time I was to the optician she tried to sell me some fancy computer-generated curve multistep bifocals with some crazy coatings and designer frames, the bill would have been close to $1000. I didn’t even ask for her opinion, she just started pushing this stuff. I went home and bought $50 glasses that I’ve been happy with for over a year now.

dexter = right, sinister = left
OD = right eye, OS = left eye.

sphere = simple correction, near/farsightedness
cyl+axis = astigmatic correction

PL = flat(plano), no correction (0.00)

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyeglass_prescription

So yours is:
right eye:
sphere -2.50
cylinder -0.75
axis 19

left eye:
sphere 0.00
cylinder -0.75
axis 19

You will also need your PD – pupillary distance. This is simply the distance from the center of one pupil to the center of the other when you’re looking at something far away.

If you have gotten glasses before, call up the optometrist and ask for your PD. It does not change. They are required to provide you this information.

I have had good luck measuring this myself by standing at a window, holding a mm ruler with a thumbnail on “zero”, holding the ruler even with my eyes and sliding my other thumbnail along the ruler from the other side while looking at a far away tree until the two nails seem to touch in my vision, then look at the measurement. I came to within 1mm of my optometrist’s measurement. Anything within 2 or 3mm should be fine.

Sphere CYL AXIS

OD -25 -075 019

OS PL -075 019

I am trying to order glasses online and all they as is what is the Left eye and what is the Right eye ( example.. 15.5 or 20.1)

Lost…please help!!

I seriously wish I’d gone online to buy to begin with. I intend to purchase through Zinni and I’m glad I found this forum.

What I did to find out was to go to a drug store where they had reading glasses, and while wearing my normal glasses, put reading glasses of varying strengths over my normal glasses and try to read something (I just picked up a nearby product and read the box). I picked the strength that let me read comfortably in a reasonable distance from my eyes. If you haven’t had bifocals before then, like me, you probably only need +1.0 or +1.25.

Just use that as the “add” (maybe labeled NV-ADD) for the progressive lenses when you order. Done. It’s that simple.

I also eventually wanted computer glasses. All these are is a normal single-vision glasses with HALF the add that you use for reading, because computer monitors are not quite that close. So for me, I have +1.0 on my reading, so I add +0.5 for my computer glasses. Since these are single-vision, you just add that to the spherical correction on both eyes. Note that if you are nearsighted, your spherical is NEGATIVE, so adding to it makes it less negative. One of my eyes, for instance, is -2.25 spherical, so my computer glasses have -1.75 on that side.

The computer glasses give you comfortable reading at a distance of 3 to 4 feet from your eyes, over the whole area (single vision). They’ll be a little blurry in the distance if you forget and walk around with them on.

I work on computers all day at work, and never had computer glasses. They were $18 including shipping at Zenni, and it was ridiculous of me not to get them before, they make it much nicer to work all day.

I got her a new pair on Zenni for less than $50. They are not quite as stylish as her other frames, but for the price she could care less. She has been wearing them for about six months now and has not noticed any problems.

Personally, I feel like it is a great option for those who need to see and simply can’t afford to pay the outrageous prices at the optometrist’s. I’m sure that when mail-order contacts first came out the eye doctors were going nuts then, too. I’m positive that ordering glasses online will become very mainstream. Better figure out a different way to make those extra bucks, docs.

On another note, I once went to a well respected opthamologist for a minor eye surgery and had a routine eye exam while I was there. They asked me if I wanted to buy glasses from them since my insurance covered x amount of dollars (I forget how much now) when I said I was not interested, but wanted a copy of my prescription (I didn’t like their selection) they were almost livid! This is simply unacceptable behavior, in my opinion.

Finally, I would just like to say that I have a pair of Pucci frames that were around $500-$600 if I remember correctly. I have a simple prescription and so my lenses were another $100 or so. For the price I paid you would expect perfect glasses, but let me tell you I have had to take them in at least half a dozen times because the lenses were not cut properly and continue to pop out. I have even had another optometrist confirm this, while the former optometrist maintains that it’s just how my frames are. You know whose lenses aren’t popping out? My mother’s! So in terms of craftmanship, you can get crap quality anywhere. On top of that, Zenni sells a pair of glasses almost identical to my Pucci’s for about $10…