Lighting Comparison

[Big_Geek]

I am researching off-road lights for mounting on my bull bar. I'm noticing that each manufacturer chooses different methods of measuring light output (lumens vs. lux at certain distances). Does anyone know of a way to convert these measurements into a common unit so that direct comparisons can be made?

 

[Hilldweller]

Watch out for buzz words, gimmicks, fancy lenses, filters, and other nonsense.
When I test lights I use LUX and that's it. I measure at set distances and compare apples to apples.
There is so much hyperbole in lighting these days.

Look on this forum a bit: http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/forumdisplay.php?87-Automotive-Motorcycles-Included

 

[Stumpalump]

Don't get too hung up with all the expensive lights. They all light fine but you can pay 5 times the price for a 5% better light beam. Power consumption is what you should focus on. On tuff trails you still can't beat a good navigator/passenger with the trusty old Q-Beam that's in your garage collecting dust. Have them look ahead while your focused on what's in front of you and have them light up the bad spots as you get to them. They are also the best to follow the wildlife you may see.

 

[Hilldweller]

Don't get too hung up with all the expensive lights. ...

Quoted for fact.

Some of the most expensive have the most ridiculous claims.
Like having a blue lens and claiming that you can see better with it. In any condition. Laughable.
How can a filter make a light brighter? How can you filter out ROY (red/orange/yellow), keep the blue, and not have more glare?

My favorite supplemental light is still the Hella Rallye 4000, Euro pattern, with a 100w bulb. Works great, not too pricey, easy to source and replace on the fly if you trash one.
And they're LEGAL to use on the street! That means you won't blind an oncoming driver, make him crash (maybe into you), and you won't get a fix-it-ticket.
Good stuff.

 

[Xfactor]

take Hilldweller's advise...i did, and couldn't be more pleased. the hella 4000 euro beam with the 100w bulbs flat out rock.

I drive a lot of forestry roads, and remote northern BC to Alaska highways. The hardest thing is your eyes adjusting when you turn the lights off due to oncoming traffic.

 

[SSF556]

Bill is the man...


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

[SoCalMonty]

I am researching off-road lights for mounting on my bull bar. I'm noticing that each manufacturer chooses different methods of measuring light output (lumens vs. lux at certain distances). Does anyone know of a way to convert these measurements into a common unit so that direct comparisons can be made?

Glad to hear there are others who realize this! Ligthing specs can be very misleading. A high powered flashlight could put out WAY more "lumens" than a car headlight, but you couldn't necessarily drive with it...not nearly as much usable light as a car's headlight. So many factors involved.

Watch out for buzz words, gimmicks, fancy lenses, filters, and other nonsense.
When I test lights I use LUX and that's it. I measure at set distances and compare apples to apples.
There is so much hyperbole in lighting these days.

Look on this forum a bit: http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/forumdisplay.php?87-Automotive-Motorcycles-Included

I'm active there, and a flashlight nerd. Even lux isn't enough - if the beam pattern is different, then it's apples to oranges. Lux is more useful to me, but still doesn't tell the whole story, especially once you get into different color temps.

Don't get too hung up with all the expensive lights. They all light fine but you can pay 5 times the price for a 5% better light beam. Power consumption is what you should focus on. On tuff trails you still can't beat a good navigator/passenger with the trusty old Q-Beam that's in your garage collecting dust. Have them look ahead while your focused on what's in front of you and have them light up the bad spots as you get to them. They are also the best to follow the wildlife you may see.

So true. It's like paying a 300% markup to get the newest wireless device, because it's 2 weeks newer than your "old" one.

take Hilldweller's advise...i did, and couldn't be more pleased. the hella 4000 euro beam with the 100w bulbs flat out rock.

I drive a lot of forestry roads, and remote northern BC to Alaska highways. The hardest thing is your eyes adjusting when you turn the lights off due to oncoming traffic.

Almost ANY light with a good old relayed 100w halogen bulb is MORE than enough for pretty much any situation. I am about to install some cheapy Pilot 4.5" spots w/ said 100w bulbs. In the past, I'd been a fan of Hella Comet 500's.

Light placement is also important...and, I wish more manufacturers would post beam data (Spot? flood? combo? How many degrees is the cone?).

 

[Hilldweller]

Pilot makes a couple of capable cheap-n-stinky lights that are great for offroad.

My big criteria for picking a light:
1) Legal
2) It works
3) Reliable
4) Easy to maintain/replace

Some lights put out stinkloads of light but it's all over the place; you can't use that on the highway and it's worse than no light at all in bad fog.

Then there are these fancy lightbars. I knew a guy that had a pair of flamethrower 7" HID offroad lights that put out enough light to tan under. I had to reset my light meter to a higher scale to measure them at 75 yards; that's bright by any standard.
He replaced them with a fancy LED lightbar. It measured zero LUX at 50 yards ----- and he still liked it better...

People are buying lights these days for the cool factor. They decide it's bright by looking at it rather than with it.

When you're offroad and going 3mph, a crapton of unfocussed light is okay. Nobody gets hurt and it doesn't really matter that your pupils are constricted to the size of little pinholes.
But when you're on the road, a good focus and aim are necessary. You don't want excessive foreground light, excessive upward wash. You want your pupils to dilate and you want to see the road ahead.

Hella has 90mm driving lights or even the 90mm highbeams that you can mount in a bumper. Good stuff.

 

[Ozarker]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lux

Lumens didn't copy for me, but it measures the beam rather than the lighted surface.

I buy lights from dealers that allow me to return them. I don't mount them but test them in various positions before mounting. Turn them on and get in the driver's seat to test. I looked for a large, dark flat lot or field.

Seems most mount lights where they look cool not based on function and use. When you see a matched set mounted 18" apart, that's for the cool factor as crossing beams doesn't really make it twice as bright.

 

[docwatson]

Hilldweller,

What models from Pilot would you say are cheap but still a "decent" light for offroad?

 

[Hilldweller]

Hilldweller,

What models from Pilot would you say are cheap but still a "decent" light for offroad?

I don't really know one from the other.... ....but the Jeep JK crowd was having luck with the little ones that would fit in the stock holes for the foglights. They had a decent pattern and not so much upward glare.
I never did any actual testing with any Pilots. I've seen them in action though ---- and everybody knows that anecdotes are scientific. :ylsmoke:

 

[4x4junkie]

Quoted for fact.

Some of the most expensive have the most ridiculous claims.
Like having a blue lens and claiming that you can see better with it. In any condition. Laughable.
How can a filter make a light brighter? How can you filter out ROY (red/orange/yellow), keep the blue, and not have more glare?

Just to add to this...
What I find even more puzzling is the LED light fad currently raging out there (both for offroad vehicle lights and flashlights). Without any filters or anything these lights put out super-massive amounts of very narrowbanded blue light energy along with a minimal amount of energy in the red/orange/yellow region just to make the beam itself appear "white", which results in far more glare (to me, anyway) than if one were to just put the blue filter you mention over an incandescent or other type light. More interesting is how few-to-none of the LED light manufacturers seem to understand this limitation of phosphor-based LEDs (the kind virtually all LED lighting products use), and how that impacts the light's spectral output when they select the exceedingly high color temperature LED chips that they do.
I briefly dabbled in the LED flashlight craze for a moment myself, but then returned to my trusty little old 2 D-cell MagLite which I converted to run off AA-NiMH rechargeables with a 6-cell incandescent (Xenon) bulb about 12 years ago.


FWIW, I have a pair of Pilot 55W slim lights (2" x 5.5" thereabouts) mounted in my rear bumper as backup lights. They're pretty bright, though I haven't really compared them to see how well their beam definition is (stray light being cast upward, etc.). They don't have glare shields over the bulbs so I wouldn't think they'd do well in fog, but might be OK as a driving light used in conjunction with your high beams?


Also, something to be aware of... Putting 100W bulbs into too small of a housing can cause the bulbs to overheat and burn out (I know, I've tried this before myself). It seems the cutoff point is about a 6" round housing, or a 5x7" rectangle housing for a 100W bulb (and even then, if the housing's internal reflector isn't vented like my ProComp 100s weren't, the bulbs can still run too hot if you have good strong wiring running to them). You'll know this to be the case if the bulbs last for a few on-cycles and then turn all black & blue before quitting altogether.

 

[mtbikerTi]

The reason they use high color temperature LED's is because those LED's produce more lumens/watt, and therefore you need fewer LED's to hit whatever magical marketing lumen figure they have. Fewer LED's = more profit.

At some point you have enough light, and then the quality of the light becomes the thing to pursue. Beam shapes, light color, etc. Don't forget that too much light in the foreground will reduce your ability to see long range as well. Most of the LED light bars on the market now (maybe all of them...) don't do a very good job of getting the light downrange.

 

[SoCalMonty]

Also, something to be aware of... Putting 100W bulbs into too small of a housing can cause the bulbs to overheat and burn out (I know, I've tried this before myself). It seems the cutoff point is about a 6" round housing, or a 5x7" rectangle housing for a 100W bulb (and even then, if the housing's internal reflector isn't vented like my ProComp 100s weren't, the bulbs can still run too hot if you have good strong wiring running to them). You'll know this to be the case if the bulbs last for a few on-cycles and then turn all black & blue before quitting altogether.

Get some CPU heatsinks (assuming a light with a metal housing) and stick them on the back of the light. Helps a lot with the temps!

 

[4x4junkie]

Get some CPU heatsinks (assuming a light with a metal housing) and stick them on the back of the light. Helps a lot with the temps!

I actually have a set of lights that came with heat sinks on them, however they still had bulb burnout issues (their inner reflector was unvented at the top).
The bulb itself needs a sufficient amount of air to hit upon it directly, which if the housing is too small and/or there's no openings right below & above the bulb, the heat just saturates the air within it's confined space with no way for it to escape easily leading to the bulb cracking where it's crimped into it's metal base.
You can try it if you want though... Maybe depending on what particular lights you get you could get lucky. But if the bulbs end up lasting only a few trips and you find the bulbs turn a bluish, grayish black afterward, at least you'll know why and the only harm you've done is $15 or so to your wallet.

The reason they use high color temperature LED's is because those LED's produce more lumens/watt, and therefore you need fewer LED's to hit whatever magical marketing lumen figure they have. Fewer LED's = more profit.

At some point you have enough light, and then the quality of the light becomes the thing to pursue. Beam shapes, light color, etc. Don't forget that too much light in the foreground will reduce your ability to see long range as well. Most of the LED light bars on the market now (maybe all of them...) don't do a very good job of getting the light downrange.

I've figured as much... "Quality of the light be dammed, Lets get more lumens out so that we can brag about being the brightest on the block!!!"

Precisely why they don't project downrange so well, they have almost no R/O/Y within that intense blue beam.