Lighting set-ups: HID vs. LED

mogwildRW1

Adventurer
LED's and metal halide (HID) are very similar in efficacy (lumens/watt), but LED's do have the edge. The major issue with LED's is that most of the light bar makers aren't using the newest and most efficient LED's, and they aren't using the best optics for distance. There is a lot of information out there on the difficulty in getting an LED to "throw", due to the fact that an LED emits light from a relatively large surface, whereas an HID or other filament bulb produces the light from more or less a "point source". Search around for LED and aspheric optic and you'll see what kind of distance is possible.
Aspheric optics take up space though, and people want a light bar with 8 gazillion lumens and don't really care if it's all foreground light or not. A good light bar design would probably include several aspheric lenses for distance as well as more traditional optics/reflectors for fill. It would take a lot of R & D to get a really good beam pattern as you have to design multiple beam shapes to interact with each other and spread the light out. It's a lot more profitable to just put a bunch of LED's in a bar and call it a day.

I guess my question would be, which manufactures, if any, are doing the latest greatest, and what would be a good buy at this time?
 

McFly2003

Adventurer
Whats your budget for aux. lighting?

I haven't really set up a budget yet. This is still sort of in the planning phase and it will be an on going process as I don't have the capital to do it all at once. I will be doing the font bumper first, for sure. I hit a deer the other day on my way into work and it really got me thinking about my specific needs a lot more. After doing some runs around work (I am stationed at the Air Force Academy, it's a lot of acres with very little road lighting), I think I am going to go with some longer range lights on the bumper itself, probably driving beam. Then I was thinking maybe a Rigid SR flood on the top bar of the bumper to get a bit of spread off the front of the truck.
As for the roof, that will be getting the royal treatment as well, but it doesn't have immediate priority.
 

Clutch

<---Pass
Seems to me that LED's do not have a long life, (quite the opposite of what we are told from the manufactures) I was following a propane truck the other day half of the board in each of his LED taillights were out, going around town I see the same with the LED converted traffic lights.

As someone was stating about the color temperature, I have real hard time with the white LED's, my eyes simply do not like them. Slightly off topic, those blue Christmas and emergency vehicle LED's are even worse, apparently we humans can't see the a certain part of spectrum of the blue they admit, and that is why they look blurry.
 

Clutch

<---Pass
Blue Xmas lights are the worst! Make my vision all funky.

There is a small neighborhood grocer here that has them wrapped all over their building...we hate to drive by it at night, just awful.

Yeah I am not completely sold on the LED's I was given some GU10's to try in my kitchen, not liking them over the halogens. The color temp is not very welcoming.
 

Geronimo

Observer
I am late to this tread but thought I would add a little info for the archives. The Baja 1000 just finished up the 1100 mile run to La Paz. There was a lot of discussion before the race about LED light bars that the Trophy trucks were sporting. Most figured they were there for the photo ops and would be replaced with the proven HID's before the green flag dropped. They didn't, many had the new Baja Designs OnX light bars and were reporting light through out to the same distances as the 8" HID. The overall winner Gus and Tavo Vilidosala had front end damage and lost most of there lights. They were able to run down the race leader and pass with just the LED bar, Impressive when speed were in the triple digits. I thing that the Day of the LED light bar is here. :sombrero:
 

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