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BTW not done a comparison for ages, but the owner of a Lumi HID acknowledged my triple LED (built using P3 XR-E LEDs from when they were first released) was a match for his.
What is it with Ay-Ups? Why so popular? They really are pretty feeble compared to most other lights I've seen.....
I have a set, my reasoning, light simple effective. I solo night ride to ride at night. I don't want to be carrying the sun around with me and compared to the Lumi-cycle halogen i have been using they aren't that feeble. but they do have to be treated as a set, head AND bar light.
You can get more lumens out of a single point source using a HID than LEDs, and a single point source is easier to focus. Also the point source is able to effectively be "suspended" above the reflector meaning that you are able to capture more of the light that is emmitted backwards and reflect is forward. LEDs sitting on a die are only emmitting their light in one direction, the other half is being emitted back into the die and lost.
Modern multi-die LEDs may be chucking out more Lumens than a single HID, but it's not really comparing apples with apples, however the use of multiple dies allows the use of multiple reflector optics giving perhaps a greater control of the the beam pattern.
I do a lot of Technical Diving and the LED/HID discussion is similarly active with both technologies offering advantages and disadvantages. Diving lights are a lot more expensive than biking ones - we have pressure and waterproofing to contend with. Personally I prefer LEDs because of the robustness and redundancy of multiple emitters and will take any compromises in beam pattern over the focussing advantages or colour temperature of a single HID.
Also the point source is able to effectively be "suspended" above the reflector meaning that you are able to capture more of the light that is emmitted backwards and reflect is forward. LEDs sitting on a die are only emmitting their light in one direction, the other half is being emitted back into the die and lost.
Not a valid argument. The lumen ratings for LEDs only include the light actually coming out of the die, so not considering that which gets lost backwards. Hence you don't need to have a reflector behind an LED to capture all of the emitted lumens.
I'll take the point about a point source being easier to focus - means if you want a really tight spot there are advantages to an HID. However most MTBers seem to like plenty of spill, hence that light not being focussed into a tight spot isn't actually being wasted.
There appears to me to be something about the quality of light emitted by leds that make it harder to see contrast / shadows / depth.
dunno what / why this is but the same number of lumens of halogen one seems to be able to see better than the same number of lumens of led
Ah TJ you mean the Colour temperature / rendition and yes I know what you mean, a white light output seems to me to flatten things in a 2D sort of way where as halogen output seems more depth of field 3D.
I found that with the white output of my P7 torch where as the "Bastid" also uses a P7 chipset is a bit er green which does appear to have a 3D effect
I know it sounds silly but back to back there is quite a differance
The lumen ratings for LEDs only include the light actually coming out of the die, so not considering that which gets lost backwards
Yep, no argument there, the LED Lumen rating is based on forward emitted light, but as a technology if there was a way to allow an LED emmitter to emmit in all directions then potentially you could emmit almost twice the light without any further current draw of heat generation (however heat dissipation would become a bit of an issue)
Another consideration is the wavelengths emmitted by a particular technology and ho the manufacturers measure the Lumens pumped out - are they always visible Lumens? HIDs chuck out quite a lot of non-visible light (at the UV end of the scale) some manufacturers could quote these Lumens as part of the total lumen output when in actual fact its useless to us.
Not arguing the case for HIDs - I prefer LEDs myself, just raising some other points of view.
if there was a way to allow an LED emmitter to emmit in all directions then potentially you could emmit almost twice the light without any further current draw of heat generation
Given they already have technology to allow the photons emitted backwards to escape forwards there's not the sort of advantage you seem to imply.
Another consideration is the wavelengths emmitted by a particular technology and ho the manufacturers measure the Lumens pumped out - are they always visible Lumens?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumen_(unit) "luminous flux is adjusted to reflect the varying sensitivity of the human eye to different wavelengths of light."
I stand corrected! Thanks for the clarification.
coffeeking - MemberOK my initial research was wrong, you actually want to be using RED leds up front as this does not bleach your night vision (rods) and still allows resolution of fine detail. Not good for road riding of course, but still I might knock up a red CREE option.
Why would you want to not saturate your rod response? They won't add much to your vision when your red cones are being stimulated significantly (plus you aren't providing light for them anyway, so they won't really be doing anything).
All you've achieved is a loss of chromatic information.
GlenH- vision scientist.
My personal experience is as follows:
L&M HID - first nightriding light I had and I think I was a bit spoilt. Great light, more than enough light and importantly the beam was useful both on and offroad. Regularly used to annoy mates on group nightrides as if I was behind them they could see bugger all apart from their own shadow. Problem was solved when they got the same light! Only 2 brightness modes, bloody bright and slightly less blood bright. Did have a bulb fail, sent it off to pay for repair/replacement but L&M did it for free, saving me ~ £90 for a bulb. Gave me several years of fuss free service other than that.
Exposure Enduro Maxx - Got drawn in by the marketing crap and the idea of no cables/seperate battery packs. Turned said light on for the first time and was a little dissapointed but convinced myself that I had forgotten what my other light was actually like. Battery time was crap, nowhere near what was stated and long night rides involved constant faffing with settings to eek out as much run time as I could. On 'full' my local trails seemed a hell of a lot more difficult than they used to at night and the light never actually seemed to be that bright. Biggest problem was the narrow beam, as soon as you turned the bars to negotiate a technical section it was like someone had turned out the lights!
L&M Seca 700 Ultra - After the crap Exposure I decided to go back to L&M, particularly after reading about the actual output vs. theoretical max conspiracy and seeing how the L&M actually compares to other lights on the market. Very pleased with it so far, finally I have a light that betters what I had with my L&M HID. It is brighter (but not by much) and has the added bonus of various modes as well as the more robust bulbs and the ability to switch it on off regularly without shortening the lifespan of the bulb. Far and away better than the Exposure, a lot brighter and the light is provided in a much more useful way for MTB - a seemingly perfect combo of spot and flood IMO. Was lucky to get it on a deal from Merlin which made it the same sort of price as my original HID and only marginally more than I paid for the dog egg Exposure.
If you are buying new then there is no contest, LEDs are the way to go. Need to do your homework first though as there is a very stark contrast in the two LED lights I have used.
Nice post there Will, point well made. 🙂
A bit harsh on the Exposure lights there Will.
Been running mine for over 2 years and they still exceed manufacturers stated run times. Oh and before these I ran Cateye Stadium 3s which would probably still blow most current hids out of sight
I think Will's just highlighted the main thing with current LEDs eg they're still developping quite fast so LEDs from say three years ago are a lot worse than current ones. The good news of course is that in a few years, LEDs should be as bright as the best current ones but considerably cheaper and with smaller batteries.
A bit harsh on the Exposure lights there Will.Been running mine for over 2 years and they still exceed manufacturers stated run times.
Sounds like you have been lucky then. IMO the L&M Seca is a vastly superior light. I look forward to nightriding again now, with the Exposure it was a constant faffing and dim affair
I think Will's just highlighted the main thing with current LEDs eg they're still developping quite fast so LEDs from say three years ago are a lot worse than current ones. The good news of course is that in a few years, LEDs should be as bright as the best current ones but considerably cheaper and with smaller batteries.
More that some manufacturers are more honest than others and have better in house engineering - hence they can make something with superior qualities to what everybody else does, which are basically no better than DIY jobs in fancier packaging. The trouble of course being that level of engineering takes longer to get to market. From what I can work out, the main reason Secas are better is down to being less optimistic about light output, and so using more LEDs for the same claimed output.
Meanwhile I'm not so sure about smaller batteries - unless you know of something around the corner I don't, there's nothing new coming soon in the way of battery tech, and LED efficiencies are only going to improve incrementally (state of the art now is only 75% better efficiency than 3 years ago, which is when we saw the never to be repeated 100% efficiency improvement step change).
I still think you're all nuts using white lights 😆 My super-bright blue lights were awesome and gave me much better night vision surrounding the beam pattern. Was like riding by moonlight!
So blue is better than red or yellow? 🙄
"So blue is better than red or yellow"
God knows. I'm sure someone will be along soon with a spectrum analysis so we can all sleep easier at night.
Mind you my old Stadiums gave out a nice bluish/white light - perhaps that's why they were nicknamed Daylights.
Both Blue (I've just found out, and it ties up to my limited experience with my blue ones) and red are very good at limiting rod bleaching, yellow and green are apparently the worst...for Coleman...
[url= http://www.angelfire.com/art/enchanter/RedorGreen.html ]Detail on low light vision[/url]
You can see that your night sight relies on the rods, these are not very affected by red or blue light. So you can have a relatively high intensity of blue or red and still retain your night vision, so you dont get a bright area and then sharp contrast off to black. Any whitish light will contain most wavelengths, by definition, so a tinting doesnt make much difference, you need to keep very few wavelengths emitted for it to work (so it'd have to be either filtered or LEDs)
Problem is your mates will ride with whitey yellow stuff and that will trash your night vision also, so really only any use if you ride alone.
All very well, but even if your mates aren't riding with lights that will kill off your rods, you're riding around with a high intensity light of your own, which whilst it might not be the rods favourite colour is still bright enough to stimulate them. That study you link to is talking about low levels of illumination.
The thing I'm confised by is how you've managed to test all these different colours in a matter of hours.
As said above I think more R&D time should be spent on beam patterns. Putting ever more powerful LEDs into the same casing seems pointless once you've got past a certain amount of lumens.
I've got an L+M Seca 700, easily makes my mates ARC look dull, the distance the beam reaches seems fairly equal but the Seca has far more spread (which is brighter).
I tried Hope 4 LED and Seca 700 LED side by side and the Seca appeared brighter with a much better beam pattern.
Still wish I bought the 900 now 🙁
The thing I'm confised by is how you've managed to test all these different colours in a matter of hours.
Ive not, you've mis-read. My first comment about yellow was my mistake (noted on the previous page) which I corrected to red. Then realised blue should also work, Ive tested blue some time ago, and it worked without me realising why. And since read that red might be better, or maybe a combination of the two.
rods favourite colour is still bright enough to stimulate them
Nope, if you pick the most red of reds you're actually outside the sensitivity curve of the rods, so you're illuminating your way with the light the cones are sensitive to but not bleaching the rods. Or at least thats the theory.
Mate has HIDs and i ride with LEDs. To be honest sitting at the top of spooky woods is no longer fun at night as he comes along and lights everything up and blinds me. LEDs can be turned off to allow to to enjoy teh night.
Peterpoddy wrote: "Great HIDs I think. You should try an L&M!
It's certainly better than twin Lumi LEDS and Ay-ups (I know a couple of people with Ay-Ups. TBH I think the beam is feeble)"
I'm not sure what the lumis you refer to are, lumicycle maybe? But Ayups aren't very good-lovely design, well made, great company, good support, just not enough light. Very badly outclassed by most LED lights now so maybe not a good example.
I reckon my mate's Seca 900 is a little better than his old Arc, and my 2 LED torches together are better than his Seca.
Oh Lordy, Lordy! This is getting slightly anal - blue, red yellow. Aargh!
I buy some lights that are nice and light, with good run times and powerful. Charge them up, turn them on, go for a ride, and if they do what it says on the tin and I can see where I'm going they're good,if not they're rubbish. 🙂
Oh Lordy, Lordy! This is getting slightly anal - blue, red yellow. Aargh!
Hardly, was just a quick discussion of what colour light works best. Seems pretty relevant to me and an obvious question to ask, rather than just throwing endless amounts of power at the problem and waiting for the next brightest LED. Still, I like to do things with some sort of scientific reasoning, rather than just blindly buy and use. If you choose to work another way thats fine with me, I'm not calling you a lackadaisical hype follower for your choice of lighting 😉
" I'm not calling you a lackadaisical hype follower for your choice of lighting "
Oooh! That hurt.
I actually carefully research all my purchases, lights included. Just playfully pointing out you don't need to be a lighting engineer to purchase a decent set of lights - or perhaps I've just been lucky so far. 🙂
Putting ever more powerful LEDs into the same casing seems pointless once you've got past a certain amount of lumens.
quite true and to some extent the evermore brighter leds can mask a poor choice of optic with sheer power .
but now with the new stuff coming along the extra power is not at the expense of battery consumption so yes they are better in my opinion
Sorry for trying to be constructive but perhaps if the question was asked how old the HID I would of said about 4 years old and aproximatly 50 ish hrs use.
nowt wrong with doing the test Andy, but you have to state what the benchmark is if you're going to use it as a reference!
thankyou.
HIDs ae just plain dangerous! (cutting out)
cheap DX P7s wipe the floor with them in every aspect.
and at full beam both are overkill for anything less than full-DH or night dirt jumping anyway.
Nope, if you pick the most red of reds you're actually outside the sensitivity curve of the rods, so you're illuminating your way with the light the cones are sensitive to but not bleaching the rods. Or at least thats the theory.
Which is fine if you're interested in maintaining your night vision. Not so good for actually seeing anything in your light beam - apart from a total lack of colour rendition, the output of red LEDs is nowhere near as high as white ones (at least partly because the eye response isn't so good). For an XP-E for example, the best red is only 52lm as opposed to 114lm for white.
I'm liking the warmer led's in my Hope 4's; it's more of a daylight white. Combined with the individual optics you get a lovely even spread of light. My mates Lumi's look really yellow in comparison and other led's really stark/blue.
You initially miss a hotspot, but when used to them you realise you don't really need it - you don't have spot vision in the daytime do you? Saying that though, if I ever manage to fix my Fenix to my Fox Flux (the Twofish Locblock wont fit like it did on my old Xen) , I may use that too, or buy a DX torch.
They aren't nearly as bright as claimed though. I'd say the quoted 960 lm is closer to 700.
WTF do you guys ride at night that you need any more than 500lm?
and you must be awfully skilled to be comparing light colour while you do it.
😕
Have an old Lumi HID for 4 yrs then added a P7 on my helmet, which outperforms the HID in direct comparison.
When the Lumi battery died a month later, I faced the choice of either replacing the HID with another P7 or buying a new battery. £100 battery vs £40 torch & I don't have to use a heavy bottlecage / bag battery.
No contest.