Pilla Outlaw Lens

The Pilla Outlaw Lens — Eyes Are The Sport

There is a quiet truth in clay target shooting that almost every shooter learns slowly, then never forgets. Before the gun, before the choke, before the technique — you have to see the target. Properly. Cleanly. Sooner than the shooter next to you. Everything that happens on the stand is downstream of what your eyes can resolve in the half-second between “pull” and the break, and what your eyes can resolve is decided, more than by anything else, by the lens in front of them.

The Pilla Outlaw lens exists for the shooter who has worked that out. It is the most demanding piece of clay-shooting eyewear money buys — a single, one-piece, wraparound lens, hand-finished in Italy under an exclusive partnership with Zeiss, offered in two body sizes (X6 and X7) and in more than forty engineered filtrations. There is a Pilla lens optimised for almost any combination of target, sky, background and light you will face on an Australian clay ground.

It is, unashamedly, expensive. We will not dance around that. It is expensive because it is made by Zeiss, because the single one-piece lens is the most optically demanding way to build wraparound sports eyewear, and because every filtration in the range is engineered, optically tested and characterised — not picked off a swatch. You are paying for the optical and material standard that sits behind a great deal of the world’s very best clay target shooting.

Sold in Australia by Gun Bar as an Authorised Pilla Pro Stockist. From $449 per lens, in stock now. Choose your size and your filtration — or call the team and we will help you choose.

Everything On The Stand Is Downstream Of What You Can See

If you cannot see the target sooner and cleaner, the rest doesn’t matter.

A perfect mount on a target you saw a tenth of a second late is still a missed target. A perfect swing on a clay you cannot quite separate from a wall of green gum trees is still a guess. Clay target shooting, more than almost any sport, is decided in the half-second between the call and the break — and that half-second is governed by what your eyes can resolve. Eyes first, gun second.

The shooters who win consistently understand this and equip for it. They do not shoot in plastic sunglasses out of a service-station spin rack. They do not borrow shop glasses from a club basket. They wear competition-grade lenses, tuned to the discipline they shoot and the conditions they shoot in — because the gun can only ever finish what the eyes have started.

Pilla makes those lenses. They are the eyewear of choice for many of the world’s very best clay target shooters — Olympic-level competitors, world-champion sporting and trap shooters, and a great many club shooters who decided that their scores were being held back by their glasses, not their gun. It is not a coincidence. It is the optics.

Italian Lenses, Made By The Most Trusted Name In Optics

The same Zeiss that makes camera glass, microscope objectives, and the lenses behind a great many of the world’s premium binoculars.

Pilla does not manufacture its own lens substrate. It does not have to. Pilla’s lenses are produced in Italy under an exclusive partnership with Carl Zeiss — the German optics house whose name has, for more than 175 years, been the byword for serious glass. The same Zeiss that makes the lenses behind some of the most expensive cameras, microscopes and rangefinder binoculars on the planet makes the lens that sits in front of your eyes when you call “pull”.

That partnership matters because lens quality is not a marketing claim — it is a measurable thing. Optical clarity, contrast acuity, distortion control, abrasion resistance, transmission accuracy across the spectrum: there is real, engineered science behind every Pilla lens, and the bar that science is held to is the bar Zeiss holds itself to. You are not paying for a logo on the side. You are paying for the same fundamentals that put Zeiss on a Leica.

One Lens, One Field Of View — No Frame Through Your Peripheral

Traditional shooting glasses use two separate lenses joined by a bridge. Pilla doesn’t.

The Outlaw uses a single, seamless, one-piece lens that wraps from one side of your vision to the other. There is no frame, no bridge, no bar interrupting the picture between two lenses. From the corner of your left eye to the corner of your right, the world is one continuous panel of glass.

That matters for one specific reason: targets are not always in the middle of your view. They come in from your left, leave to your right, appear over and under the tree line. A traditional dual-lens design puts a vertical break — frame, bridge, edge — somewhere in your peripheral vision, often exactly where a clay target is doing its most interesting work. The one-piece Pilla design takes that break out entirely. Every part of your field of view sits behind the same lens, in focus, at the same tint, with no interruption to track across.

It is far harder to manufacture than two flat lenses in a frame. The Outlaw’s one-piece lens has to maintain optical correctness across a curved, wraparound surface — no distortion at the edges, no chromatic aberration, no fall-off in contrast as the eye tracks toward the periphery. It is the most demanding way to build sports eyewear, and it is the reason a Pilla shoots differently from anything else.

More Than Forty Engineered Filtrations — A Lens For Every Light, Every Background, Every Target

Pilla calls them filtrations rather than tints. The difference is exactly what you think it is.

A regular sunglass tint dims the world evenly. A Pilla filtration tunes it. Each lens in the Outlaw range is engineered for a specific combination of ambient light, background colour and target characteristic — designed to bring the clay forward and push the background back, so the orange dome leaps off the green gum trees, or the black trap target stands out against an open Queensland sky.

The Outlaw library runs to more than forty filtrations. The leading number on each lens code is, in broad terms, its Visible Light Transmission — the percentage of available light the lens lets through. Lower numbers (9.5, 12, 18) are very dark, built for hard bright sun and open-sky backgrounds; middle numbers (36, 50, 60) are the all-conditions workhorse tints; higher numbers (80, 92, 98) are very light, for overcast days, late afternoon, indoor ranges and dawn-or-dusk shooting. The letter codes that follow denote Pilla’s colour family and coating series.

Within the library there are some genuinely special filtrations to know about. The Quartz series (Light Quartz LQGR and Dark Quartz DQGR) are gemstone-named contrast lenses. The Citrine (CCGR), Ruby (RCGR) and Sapphire (SCGR) are tuned for specific background-and-light combinations. The Pink Diamond (PCGR), Blush Peach (69CIPE), Guava (39CIG), Kiwi (53CIK) and Golden Berry (62CIED) carry distinctive contrast profiles for low-light precision and specific background management.

And Pilla offer two dedicated colour-blind filtrations (RGLL and RGHL) — a thoughtful, technically engineered accommodation for shooters whose red-green colour vision sits outside the standard range. These are not a gimmick: they exist because Pilla took the brief seriously.

How do you choose? Most serious clay shooters own two or three lenses and swap them as the day and the discipline change — a darker filtration for a bright morning, a lighter one for an overcast afternoon, a specialist tint for trap targets versus a green sporting background. There is no single right answer; there is a right answer for you, today, here. The Gun Bar team know the range and will talk you through what suits your eye, your conditions and your discipline — please call before you buy your first one.

X6 Or X7 — Pick The Body That Fits Your Face

A wraparound only works if the geometry actually wraps. Pilla makes the Outlaw in two sizes so it does.

The Outlaw is a wraparound lens, and a wraparound is only worth wearing if the geometry actually fits your face. Too wide and it gaps at the temples and lets ambient light in around the lens. Too narrow and it sits forward, brings the lens too close to your eye, and chokes ventilation. Pilla solves it the honest way — by making two body sizes.

When in doubt, ask. If you already own a pair of competition glasses, you know your face well enough to choose between X6 and X7. If you do not, the Gun Bar team can guide you. Pilla make both sizes deliberately, because fit is part of how the lens performs — a lens that sits properly to your face is a lens that delivers what it is engineered to deliver.

Yes, They Are Expensive — And Yes, They Are Worth It

We will not dance around the price. Neither should you.

A Pilla Outlaw lens is $449. A complete Pilla kit, with multiple lenses and a frame, runs into the thousands. There is no version of this conversation that pretends those are small numbers.

But here is the honest framing. The lens is made by Zeiss. The single-piece wraparound design is the most demanding way to build sports eyewear, full stop. Every filtration in the catalogue is engineered, optically tested and characterised — not picked off a sticker book by a marketing team. You are paying for an actual product, with real, measurable optical performance, not for a brand sticker on plastic.

And here is the bit of trap-line economics that applies just as well to every clay shooter. You spend thousands on the gun. Hundreds on chokes. Hundreds on a year’s ammunition. And then, for many shooters, the very last link in the chain — the one that decides whether the targets you can actually see become the targets you actually break — gets plastic supermarket sunglasses. On every other piece of that chain you spend properly. The lens in front of your eyes is no place to start saving.

The Pilla Outlaw is, for our money, the most cost-effective serious upgrade a clay shooter can make. The day you put one on and see a clay target you used to lose against the trees — the day you stop blaming your gun for shots you never actually saw — you will agree.

Engineered, Not Just Tinted

The features that separate competition-grade eyewear from off-the-shelf glasses.

Pilla Outlaw Lens — Full Specifications

The complete specification for the Pilla Outlaw lens, as sold by Gun Bar — an Authorised Australian Pilla Pro Stockist.

Built For Clay — Worn By Anyone Whose Eyes Decide The Result

Pilla’s home is the clay line. The technology travels.

The Lens Is The Start — The System Is The Rest

A Pilla setup is a lens, a frame, and the means to look after both.

Pilla Outlaw Lens — Common Questions

Quick answers to the questions we hear most. Anything not covered? Call the team on 1800 GUNBAR.