Are you left-eyed?

[Medusa83]

I am left eyed but right handed. Using my right eye feels so strange I find that I squint if I try and use my right eye and thus am not able to see much at all.

 

[pnance]

There are a lot of left eye people who have responded. However most photographers I've noticed seem to use their right eye. Myself, I'm right handed and right eye blind, so I definitly use the left eye, out of necessity. I've never gotten what people are watching in a 3D movie!

Paul

 

[Paul VanAudenhove]

Another left eyed and right handed. Another test I was told of to determine which eye was dominant was to hand someone a telescope or empty paper towel roll, and tell them to look at something through it. They will automatically raise it to the dominant eye.

 

[Jeff Kubach]

I never gave it much tought, but I use my right eye.

Jeff

 

[Christopher Walrath]

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry9000/4.6.0.167 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/102 UP.Link/6.3.0.0.0)

I am left handed. I am right eyed. And I just double checked. I focused across the room and raised my index finger into view so that while focused on the far wall I saw two of it. I closed my left eye and the finger stayed still. The one I nayturally look at was the one I saw through my right eye. In photography I shoot with the right eye to the viewfinder. Wheb I'm shooting clays I have to shoot left_handed or else my aim is so far off I can't hit a single thing. I don't get that.

 

[JBrunner]

Left.

 

[flatulent1]

I am/was right-eyed, as well as being right-handed. As a result of illness and subsequent brain surgery a few years ago I have right-sided facial paralysis and am now left-eyed. It felt very strange the first time I tried to shoot my camera. :rolleyes:

 

[Lee L]

I ask whether people are left or right eyed when they ask for recommendations for certain cameras. I love a 1:1 finder on rangefinder cameras, but since they are built right-eyed, that offers nothing special to a left eyed photographer because their right eye is blocked by the body and they can't get the binocular that's nice with a 1:1 finder.

I also always asked customers to put a camera up to their eye if they expressed interest in Nikon FM or FE cameras. If they put it up to their left eye, I explained that those cameras wouldn't meter unless the advance lever was poking out away from the body, spaced properly to poke them in the right eye. You had to buy a motor drive to meter with the lever pushed in on those cameras. I always considered it a design flaw.

Lee

 

[2F/2F]

I am almost totally right eyed when photographing using a viewfinder. I like to look through the viewfinder with my right eye, and also be able to look around with my left eye, or close it if I want. I use my left eye when it happens to happen, but it does feel a little foreign.

I think what Annie Liebovitz was saying is that the viewfinder on Leicas is off to the left, while on an SLR it is pretty much dead center, so with a Leica her face doesn't get in the way of the advance lever when she is using her left eye. I don't think it is the M6 specifically, but Leica rangefinders in general.

Not to hijack the thread, but in the same vein, which way do you rotate your camera for a vertical (when not using square format or a revolving back camera, obviously)? Clockwise or counterclockwise? I usually go clockwise, now that I think about it.

 

[phenix]

I’m right handed, but my dominant eye is the left one. I also wear glasses. I tried to shoot using either the left or the right eye, and I observed a big difference in the outputs:
- pictures taken with the left eye were more object-oriented, tending to spot and isolate the object from it’s environment;
- on the opposite, right eye shot pictures were more composition-oriented, relating the object to its environment, or several objects with each other.
Learning this difference, object vs. relations, I try to force myself to use the right eye each time composition is aimed. But I forget this most of the time, so I have to correct compositions in the darkroom.

Although, being a left-eye guy, I always stick my nose on the backdoor of my SLRs, and soil the right lens of my glasses (with my finger) when holding the camera. This is why, after years of pain cleaning multicoated glasses, I switched now to uncoated ones and it feels great! On the other hand, glasses also protected me from sticking the winder in half-opened position into my right eye. And yes, being left-eye shooter it is so easy to shot a 35mm camera vertically, by rotating it CW.

 

[removed-user-1]

I'm mostly right-handed except when typing, playing piano, or driving (where both hands always have things to do). Due to a medical condition I've had all my life, I do not have binocular vision, so if I'm wearing glasses, I generally use my left eye since it has a full range of movement; however, it has a -9 diopter so without glasses I must use my right eye (which is paralyzed but doesn't have a noticeable prescription).

If the camera has a nice big viewfinder, like an RB (or the Yashica 635 in my profile pic) with a waist level, I can use either eye. When using my Nikon F100 and D300 I always wish I could use the right eye more effectively because my right cheek is always moving the focus selector!

 

[Dennis S]

When ever someone was with me and used their left eye I thought it was "weird" But as I read through this post I guess I am the weird one ! Right handed, right eyed and I rotate my camera counter clockwise. Another reason too is my left arm is partially paralized from an MVA back in 1980 (should see the excitement when I go through metal detectors @ airports) so EVERYTHING is done with my right.

 

[ChrisC]

I'm left-handed and left-eyed but the difference between eyes is minimal, and not worth the discomfort of using my eft eye.

 

[fschifano]

...which way do you rotate your camera for a vertical (when not using square format or a revolving back camera, obviously)? Clockwise or counterclockwise?

Counterclockwise.

 

[Curt]

Left eye dominate, as in the test that Christopher notes, the finger point method. I'm left handed in sports, I made pro-marksman, marksman, marksman first class and sharpshooter from the NRA. They had to fit me with a special rifle, not easy to describe but easy to use, for me that is.

With photography I'm left eye dominate but have better sight in my right eye. That's not ideal but you go with what you have. I started wearing glasses in my twenties and bifocals right around age 50. When I'm 70 it's going to be trifocals and when I'm 90 it's going to be a brain implant.

I do most tasks with my right hand, tooth bush, writing, fork, a little to much time with the fork in the recent past, I'm cutting back now, computer mouse, gear shift , etc.. But I wave with my left hand, as in hello and goodbye. Right hand military salute and left hand street salute , go figure that one out. And Scuba: Look up, "right hand up, come up". I guess I'm not waving hello or goodbye there.

 

[tjaded]

Left eye. I can't keep my right eye open while shooting, actually I can't close my left eye and keep the right one open. I'm right handed though (as well as right footed--at least I was when I played soccer a hundred years ago.)

 

[mooseontheloose]

20/20 vision. Right-handed, left-eye shooter. In baseball I hit right, in hockey I shoot left. I shoot with two Nikon FEs and have never poked myself in the eye when metering. Like many others, it feels really strange to hold the viewfinder up to my right eye - very unnatural, although I can see and focus fine with it.

Verticals - counterclockwise (unless I'm shooting square that is!).

 

[Miskuss]

Left eye, right handed. I never gave it a second thought until I started shooting with an ENG video camera. I found that I wanted to extend the eyepiece to my left eye. Of course that didn't work. But eventually I got used to using my right eye. But on my 35 mm's I always use my left eye.

 

[Ross Chambers]

My right eye vision is just about an optometrist's case study, dreadful.

Cameras which offer no, or little, difficulties: View cameras (of course) Mamiya RB 67 and the much maligned (for its perceived badly placed viewfinder, but not for me) Voigtlander Prominent.

Regards - Ross

 

[BetterSense]

I'm very right-handed but only weakly right-eye dominant. I have to train myself to be more strongly right-eye dominant for archery and shotgun reasons. When I first started photography I had a tendency to use my left eye, but I forced myself to use my right like a nun cracking a student on the knuckles. Maintaining right-eye dominance makes life a whole lot easier for a right-handed shooter.

which way do you rotate your camera for a vertical (when not using square format or a revolving back camera, obviously)? Clockwise or counterclockwise?

Depends which side I want the flash on! Without flash, it's pretty random, which is annoying with contact sheets.

 

[KWhitmore]

right eyed

 

[Lopaka]

Right-handed but not excessively so - close to ambidextrous. Sight cameras with the left eye and have always done so, it just seemed 'natural', perhaps because my vision is a bit better in the left eye. Sighted guns with the right eye in the military, as was trained to do so. Perhaps that's why I always had difficulty finding the target.
Bob

 

[tessar]

Apparently (according to Wikipedia, anyway) about two-thirds of people are right-eye dominant, the remainder left-eye dominant. There is only a slight correlation between eye and hand dominance.
I am strongly right-handed and right-eye dominant, enough so that it's difficult for me to use a left-handed-left-eye camera like a Moskva 5 -- my nose bumps into the camera body and my left hand feels clumsy releasing the shutter.
Being ambi-ocular and ambidextrous is best!

 

[Doug9345]

[...] I observed a big difference in the outputs:
- pictures taken with the left eye were more object-oriented, tending to spot and isolate the object from it’s environment;
- on the opposite, right eye shot pictures were more composition-oriented, relating the object to its environment, or several objects with each other.

Interesting! I'm going to have to experiment with this. Maybe this is why I feel so much less functional with the just the right eye compared with the left. It seems that my right eye is less corrected that my left, but maybe it has more to do with isolating objects, a skill that is important in everyday living.

 

[Akki14]

Actually, I picked up my Nikon FG and realised I do use my left eye. It's just I've never really noticed and have been mostly working with 4x5 groundglass where it's not an issue anyway. I noticed on both the FG and the F301 both have the viewfinder slightly to the left of middle so it doesn't seem to be that weird for left-eyedness. So, right handed, lefteyed even with camera (duh).