Observations on low light with different glock sites)

[Sanch]

I picked up some fiber optic sights recently to play with. They seem to be very popular with many experts here so I figured let me give it a shot. At first I tried red because I figured it would be closest to a red dot sight, so my eye looks for red glowy thing. I disregarded the green tube.

I didn’t like the sight much at first. Hard to pick up in low light. Oh I know they aren’t meant for low light, but if they are going in my gun I needed to test them in all situations!

Then I installed green and wow what a difference! It’s not that the green was appreciably brighter but that it was more translucent so that when I got a sight picture on the target I could see a hole on the front sight where the green fiber was. It wasn’t glowing, it was just kind of clear. Which was huge and made picking up the front sight much easier. The red in low light is opaque and was barely better than black steel sights.

Which is my final point, I always poo poo on sights that have too much width on the rear. I thought they were “gamer” sights to increase speed at cost of potential long distance accuracy if I really needed it in some low probability active shooter situation. But what I realized playing in low light is the wider the rear sights, the more light, which is critical in low light, and the easier to differentiate the front sight from the rears.

I don’t own tritiums anymore. I may pick up a set again to try. I didn’t like them for maybe silly reasons. My first and only tritiums were from around 2002 and they only came in 0.140” at the time or maybe even 0.160”. Or the silly big dot was around then. I really can’t shoot well at distance with a thick front sight. Now we can get 0.125 in tritium so it’s a moot point.

Also, I’m a very sensitive sleeper and have zero light emissions in my bedroom. The tritium bothered me. I don’t remember if I tried it in a nightstand, I don’t think I owned a nightstand with drawers back then, I was pretty poor and didn’t have much furniture. Now I have a nightstand with drawers so maybe the tritium won’t bother me in there.

I’m not convinced I actually need tritium sights as a civilian. I’ve read arguments both ways. Now that they come thinner, and also I can afford real furniture there seems to be less trade off in using them.

[CraigS]

I found the same thing. Outdoors the red is great. Indoors in low light it's not so great. But it's kind of academic for me since we have CTC lasers on all guns that might be used defensively.