About two months ago, I went to see my eye doctor for the annual checkup and her conclusion that my eyesight had gotten worse by a tiny bit, and yet gotten better. You see I have uneven vision so from my right eye I can see into distance clearly but have problems making out anything that is close. The left eye is mildly weak when looking into distance, but the near vision is not as bad the right eye.This makes my glasses a bit of a challenge and I need progressives.

The new glasses are great, but have caused another problem — I am have trouble focusing on the Leica. The rangefinder is notoriously hard to begin with and sometimes when I peer into it with the new glasses I am not sure if I got the focus right. I mean to my eye and to my mind the focus is razor-sharp and I have everything as I want. But when I look at the photo on a screen after I have snapped the photo, it isn’t sharp. I often take the same photo using the live view on the camera and that photo is perfectly focused.

It is frustrating because I lost so many photos I made on this trip to Porto and Zurich. Also, I hate using the “live view” to make photos — that just isn’t Leica. And I also turn it off when traveling as it allows me to conserve the batteries and make them last the whole day.

The whole part of Leica is the rangefinder view — and the meditative state it puts you in. I know I can get a diopter, but I am not sure it will help in my situation. Any suggestions on what I can do to overcome my focus challenge?

March 4, 2016, San Francisco