Trialling a Luminous 601 for a while – flipping eck it's bright! About 2000 lumens I think.

I shall be setting fire to nocturnal foliage with it when I test it properly later on.

surf_Mat.

Hi, yes, I forgot to mention, Don't look into the light
😳

Enjoy
😉

Lum – that was from a reflection off a window – not even directly into my eyes!

Do you have to wear sunglasses when riding with a light that bright? 😀

Only if you answer to the name Elwood or Jake
😀

Lum's stuff is great. Had his light on trial twice and the Mountain Mayhem riders I was lapping thought I was right behind them when infact i was 150m was brilliant.

Also got told off as it was too bright in the campsite. Quality

Dimmadan.

Also got told off as it was too bright in the campsite. Quality

LoL, you never mentioned that before.

Good effort.
🙂

Sorry buddy, thought I did.

Dimmadan.

Cool, Surf_Mat has that very light.
😉

Slight thread hijack, but what kind of lumens is considered normal for an MTB light these days?

Tron – it keeps on going up.

A while back I got a £40 Cateye EL500 (I think) which seemed bright – it's utterly pathetic next to the light that replaced it, a Hope Vision 1 (240 lumens). However on my last ride I was woefully "underlit" on a technical XC ride – my mates with 700 and 1000 lumen lights were fine.,

I'd say you need about 250ish for the road, at least twice that off road.

tron, I've been night riding for years with just a joystick, 240 lumens.

Sometimes I feel like I could use more, most of the time its fine. You get used to what you use I guess.

having both a helmet and bar mounted lights makes a big difference too, if you ride anywhere that requires you to look ahead to where the bike isn't pointing.

but what kind of lumens is considered normal for an MTB light these days

Crickey. Thats a difficult one. Bit like that thread recently "how much light is enough" or something like that.

The Model 601 has an on-paper maximum of over 2000 lumens, paper lumens as I refer to them.

Last year I actually went for a lux reading, independantly measured in a lab. Result of 70 Lux at 10 metres.

But as you probably know, theres a light out there for eveyone, from a couple of hundred Lumens to a couple of Thousand.

So then I suppose it comes down to other factors and what you feel you require, such as build quality, runtime, durability, easy of use, etc, etc.

imo

I agree with Surf_Mat.

My first light was a homebrew 240 paper lumens.

We thought it was great at the time.

How things move on, eh 😉

Now we've lights capable of >2000 lumens, but they're also coming with alernative light levels, so you get the chance to run with less light if thats your thing.
🙂

Hmm. I've got a 400 lumen torch in the next room, which I suspect would be plenty for MTB, but as soon as your mate has 600 lumen lamp your eyes will adjust to that, and you'll want more.

Fantastic if you're a manufacturer of lights though 😆

I'm very much of the "you'd be surprised what you can get used to camp", as I used to do a lot of night work. We often found it was easier to walk around without lights at night as your eyes adjusted, so you had some distance vision. Walk around with a torch and you can't see anything beyond the beam.

Tron – what torch is that? Looking at the P7 Lenser (just got two Tesco AA crees at the moment) but it's a mere 200.

Plotting a 15ish mile night ride, 95% off road, very technical singletrack for Thursday. That'll be a fine test of the 601!

Well give your 400 lumen torch a go, if you need a mount, try a two-fish lock-block, or as one guy I knew once tried

Just two interlocking jubilee clips, one around the bar, the other around the torch.

It looked very HR, but he was happy.

It's a cheapy drop in on an old 3D cell Maglite – claims 4-600 lumens (presumably depending on which Mag you have it in and batteries). They're from Hong Kong, via eBay, and are sporadically listed. Look for "Fusion 36".

It chucks a lot of light in a fairly wide flood, and it's going to live in the Girlfriend's car, on the basis that it's a light with batteries that won't self discharge, and a finely engineered aluminium bashing thing.

Edit: I'm not sure how I'd get on with it strapped to the handlebars 😆

You do just get used to tons of lights. I've got two 900 lumen Lupine Edisons, one on the helmet and one on the bike. I used to ride with just one and that was fantastic. Now I'm used to two, so if I have to use one I really struggle. Stupid really.

I'm not sure how I'd get on with it strapped to the handlebars

Well, it was just a suggestion, and others do use torches.
🙂

Mol – that is pretty full on!

Well, it was just a suggestion, and others do use torches.

I have too, but it was 2xAA 3W CREE. A maglite's a bit too big 😀

I have an oldish D battery Maglite and it's the most pants torch I have ever owned – it gets out-done by torches you get free with petrol.

Also had a small AA one when doing Army stuff – again utterly pants. I know they are meant to be better now but never seen the appeal.

I'd not fork out for one again – IMO, they're typical of a lot of American stuff – more effort goes into shouting about how good it is than actually making it the best. They are well made and last, but they're not that bright.

With a cheap drop in, it becomes a useful torch, and D cell batteries mean that the run time is daft.

I reckon a lot of the maglites ever sold were off the back of the yank cops using them and their potential for bashing things.

Tron – my AA one (about 5" long) had a sort of "push in" LED type bulb that constantly fell out. Not handy on what was meant to be the best torch for the job.

It gets utterly trounced by my Tesco torches – both in durability and function.

Converting one is not a bad idea but the DD ones are too big IMO. The P7 Lenser I looked at is pretty compact although chunky. Handy if it can just about fit in a pocket.

LED type bulb that constantly fell out

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt – I think there must be grippers that wear in the mini mags. They're not LEDs though – just tiny halogen bulbs. Hence the joke amount of light when compared to an LED lamp.

I'd say my 3D maglite was comparable to an old Luxeon when it had a bulb in it. With a drop in, it's just daft 😆 And the C/D cell maglites are bombproof.

Ok so it seems that bright lights are going to brighter which is good new but has anyone or company tried making a night vision set up how cool would that be, expensive probably like every new gadget, just operating in stealth mode! 8)

Problem with NV is a lack of depth perception.

I have a PVS14 gen 3 setup and it's great for its intended purpose but having tried driving the shooting landy off road at about 2 mph with it I'd not like to try riding!

one problem with night vision stuff is that it uses nearIR. This is fine at normal temperatures but when it's cold (bleow zero) or when there is a layer of frost/snow on things, the temperature differential between rocks, the trail, the heather, etc. will be small and what depth perception there is will totally disappear.

A comment about Lumens from futher up the thread. Lumen is a measurement of the total light output. It takes no account of beam pattern, etc.
Lux is a better measurement as it gives the illumination at the centre of the beam, so the useful light.

First it was candlepower, then lumens now lux – what next?!

Interesting stuff about NV kit. Might be a bit bulky too!

better measurement

Different measurement. Lumens measures total light, Lux and Candlepower bias towards focussed light (that's my very rough understanding). As a result, you can have something with a very tight beam, poor total lumens, but high Lux / Candlepower – say a focussed maglite. On the other hand, you could have a very powerful light with broad beam, but it would have poor lux numbers.

Which one is better depends very much on what you want the lamp for.

As for NV kit – I suspect all the best stuff is classed as military equipment and not available to Joe Public!

Yes but Lux could be missleading also a light could have a very high lux centre with no real benifit to the useability of the light but the numbers sound good .

Maybe lux and lumens are needed?

Bit like bhp and torque for engines.

Sort of…!

Lux = lumens per square metre. So your lumens is the total amount of light emitted, and lux is dependent on how far away you are measuring it and how well focused it is etc.

Which raises an interesting point about my Edisons. The beam pattern is a cone, which means that to illuminate nicely along the trail you have to have the lower part of the cone to graze the trail nicely. This means that the upper part is shining right up in the air.

This is what Lupine meant when they said their Wilmas and Bettys gave more usable light. Slightly fewer lumens, more lux on the trail.

Maybe lux and lumens are needed?

Yes, just like population and population density are important.

You could say that a population of 10m is small, but if it were all on the Isle of Wight you'd be in trouble.

A useful measurement for bike lights would be lumens projected onto a standardised 2x100m section of flat trail – but that would require standard tests.

agree that Lux and Lumen are both required to get a good idea of the light unit in question. The Lumens quoted for the vast majority of lights is simply the theoretical max of the LED, as stated on the LED's data sheet. The actual Lumens will be less than that as the output drops off pretty quickly as the junction temperature increases.
I'd like to see some real Lumen measurements and some standard Lux type measrements, such as Lux at centre of beam at 10m, Lux at 1m and 2m to the side of centre at 10m. This gives some idea of useful light and beam pattern.

It does feel a bit like an arms race…
I personally started some years ago with Cateye ABS30s and thought they were mega! Have since upgraded about every 12-15months and currently run with a Cateye Double Shot Pro on my helmet (which gives c130 lumens with a good Spot beam) and a stupidly bright TrailTech MR16 on the bars (1850 lumens in a Flood beam).
The combination to me, is perfect – allowing very rapid night riding (for an old bloke anyway!!)…

Yep – it's very bright! Only a quick test but enough to confirm pretty extreme power!