If you ever lose or break your glasses, you're not stuck navigating a blurry world. Well, as long as you can manage to find your smartphone. If you're nearsighted, you can use your phone's camera function to see in-focus without glasses or contacts.
Redditor aoisenshi shared this tip for navigating your home if you're nearsighted and stuck without glasses. If you can spot your phone, open up the camera app (you can do it from the lock screen on iPhone) and use the open "viewfinder" to see around you in sharp focus.
It works because cameras always have perfect vision, so your phone will display a crisp image on screen of whatever is in front of you. You can then hold your phone nearer to your eyes at whatever focal length is best to get an in-focus image of anything in your house.
This tip could come in handy if you need to search around for your spectacles, or if you just want to make it from the bed to the bathroom without tripping on a shoe.
(Image: 1. collage of Shutterstock and Wikimedia Commons 2. aoisenshi/Reddit)
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Thanks so much for this tip! As someone who's legally blind and had no luck finding a magnifier I was comfortable with after three visits to the low vision center, this seems a great multipurpose option for someone like me. This is also the best reason to finally make the switch from my free AT&T phone to a smartphone. (I've been a stubborn holdout, proud never to have sent a text message.)
Ha, I've so done this! I really need to get some thick "trendy" glasses, not so much because they're in style, but because when I put down my thin wire-framed ones, sometimes I can't find them again. This trick has certainly helped though.
I wish they'd included a photo of Nearsighted Camera Person using the phone to see the faces of people in a crowd - much more practical than checking out the candle display.
(As a side note, if I ever found myself without my glasses, I would just sit in a corner and fall asleep. I can't see anything without them.)
ah great, I'm always stuck without my glasses when the league table or something else comes up on screen, cant wait to try this!
Funny timing. I'm wearing my dollar store emergency backup reading glasses because I apparently left my costy prescription glasses at home, for almost the first time ever! Maybe I should grab my iPhone, instead!
Love this tip! I too have thin black wire frames, and even setting them down to apply makeup or put a shirt on can make it hard to find them again. I usually call my boyfriend in to help me find them, or else I'll crawl on the floor like Velma :).
While on a tour I tripped and broke my glasses, i realized this trick but back then i had a film camara that could zoom in (aka: no digital screen) and had to hold the camara to my eyes.
This tip is very usefull but it gets very annoying after a while.
I'm confused. The camera "sees" the image in sharp focus, but won't your poorly focused eyes still see the camera image just as blurry? And wouldn't holding the phone closer to your eyes just move the phone farther from the target, and therefore, producing a smaller image to see? Somebody set me straight.
rexrayfan, if you are nearsighted (things far away are blurry), then this trick will work for you. You can point the camera at whatever you want to see. The camera will have a clear, sharp picture of whatever it is. You can then move the camera to a point where your nearsighted eyes can see it clearly.
Most nearsighted people can see a certain distance fairly clearly--it might be a few inches for a really nearsighted person, or a couple of feet for someone who isn't as nearsighted. There's a zone in which the image on the camera will appear clear and in focus to a nearsighted person. Depending on the camera, you might be able to set the distance for the focus to accommodate how close you need to hold it to your face.
Still not a substitute if you break your glasses and still have to drive home, though.
I'm wondering if this will finally allow me to see what I look like when I'm trying on new glasses. The magnifying glass that the shops have does nothing, just gives me an enlarged blurry image of my face. It would be so nice to have a good idea of what the new glasses will actually look like when they are on my face.