Out of focus

I keep repeating, but I had orbital decompression surgery on Monday. My face looked like I had a rough night at the fight club, especially around my eyes. After a week of alternating use of an ice pack for twenty minutes on and twenty minutes off, lots of bed rest, and being mentally unfocused due to strong pain medications, I can finally see out of both eyes. I am still on several medications, including whole-body anti-biotics and in-eye anti-biotics, which I apply three times daily to both eyes. I have double vision, which the doctors expect will go away on its own, or I will require additional surgery. I'll know more at my post-surgery appointment on Monday.

This week, I had not expected to submit a post for Frank's Photo Challenge. Until today, I had not even thought about the weekly challenge. I was focused on recovering from surgery. But I was skipping through the WordPress Reader, with a patch over my left eye, and saw a response to the photo challenge and out of curiosity, I looked for this week's keyword and started laughing. Focus!!

Due to cataract surgery on my left several years ago, I had to choose the type of lens I wanted. I opted for distance vision. With the left eye, I can focus on objects further than two metres from my eye. Soon after that, I had laser surgery, phase reactive keratotomy, in my right eye, which allowed me to focus on the nearby objects that were two metres or less from my right eye. My brain combines both images to enable stereoscopic vision so that I can drive safely, read a screen, read a book, and watch a movie.

Of course, seeing two of every car as I drive isn't ideal. With my post-surgery diplopia, I can't focus on anything in front of me unless I close one of my eyes. My wife gave me an eye patch to cover each eye alternately. But when you can only see out of one eye, you lose stereoscopic vision and the ability to determine depth.

So what to do? I wanted to submit an entry.

I decided to save up my energy; it takes a lot out of me to cover one eye long enough to type these words so that I could submit two images. I captured both pictures on my Fujifilm X-T2 with a manual focus 35mm film lens, and my Asahi SMC Takumar 55mm f/2. For the first image, I used the focus-peaking feature of the Fujifilm X-T2 to help me find the proper focus for the image. For the other, I focus on using just my eyes. I expect one image is sharper than the other.

The out-of-focus image accurately depicts my vision a day after surgery.

I used Luis Costa's monochrome film simulation recipe, which I found via Ritchie Roesch's [Not] My Fujifilm X-Pro2 Tri-X Push-Process Film Simulation Recipe post. The last time I shot a monochrome film was in college in the mid-'80s. I don't remember explicitly shooting Tri-X, but I remember capturing many monochrome images. I don't know if this Tri-X recipe is close to the Tri-X 35mm film, but I like how it looks.