Light Power

[Eugene]

With lumens, watts, candlepower etc etc, I am really confused.

 

How must light would a 200 lumen lamp shed. Would it give me enough light for an early morning road ride?

[Bbox]

It should....

[Cassie]

Even ESKOM will ask you for assistance in supplying JHB with your 200 lumens!!

[AndreZA]

200 lumens will be okay if you travel at about 15km/h in a lit area. Look at something of 400 upwards.

[sampie]

200 lumens will be okay if you travel at about 15km/h in a lit area. Look at something of 400 upwards.

 

I might differ on that one, i think 200 will be more than enough if its a true 200 lumens.Heavy single track, yes, then you will go 15 km/h.

[Woofie]

This is a tough question.

How much do you want to see?

I have a little thing on my head which maybe delivers 100 lumens (a guess)

It is good enough at low speeds (yes maybe 15km/h) to see bricks in the road etc.

Going up to 30km/h you start missing potholes etc so it is almost useless.

My bud has recently put together a light which has 7 xpg leds in it and it delivers about 2000 odd lumens.

Very nice and bright!! Riding next to him (or anywhere around him actually) at 30km/h or even more you can see every stone in the road etc. Wonderful!

But sticking the light down to 500MA (1200MA on full power) it leaves you feeling a bit in the dark. Still delivering close to 1000lumens probably, but the contrast between the two is pretty drastic.

Still heaven compared to headlight and you can see everything, but I like blinding cars.

 

He has also built another light so we have had enough rides to come up with some conclusions.

 

For us, we want to have close to 1000 lumens to ride on the road at speed. You can see enough (stones etc) and you are super visible.

Remember the road is black so it doesnt reflect light. So you really need the extra punch.

I borrowed a friends majicshine the other day as well. On high power it is fine (maybe 750 lumens). Mid power (guessing 300 odd) leaves you wondering when you are going to hit a brick at speed.

Low speed is all the same. Even a small cheap LED headlight is good enough but as your speed increases so the lumens requirements seems to almost go up exponentially.

[August]

I ve got 900 lumens. bought it last week.

I ride it on dim 50% of the time. When I get to technical stuff I put it on bright and it looks like the sun just came up. More than enough light.

[rudi-h]

my boet and I built MTB lights a few years ago (www.blixemligte.com for reference - we don't sell them anymore). We researched all these things extensively and we were also very clued up with the available lights on the market back then.

 

The short answer: 200 Lumens is a fair amount of light and should be more than enough for any road ride as long as the light has a fairly narrow (+-30 degrees) beam angle. To put things in perspective, a 3-cell maglite (the big ones that you can hit somebody with) only puts out 80-100 Lumens, so you've got more than two of those in your 200 Lumen light. Headlamps also typically put out 80 lumens, but is useually not good for riding, because the reflectors are designed to give a very wide spread, thus its no good further than 5-10m.

 

The lights that we have built had a 240 Lumen setting and a 480 Lumen setting with a beam angle of 34 degrees. The 240 lumen setting is more than appropriate for any road riding and the 480 lumen setting I only use for downhill singletrack.

[bradjackson]

With lumens, watts, candlepower etc etc, I am really confused.

 

How must light would a 200 lumen lamp shed. Would it give me enough light for an early morning road ride?

 

Don't let the lumens / lux / candlepower / watts thing confuse you.

 

Try the light if you can, and if it works for you for the application you need it, then you have a winner.

 

People seem to have vastly different levels of night-vision, for some a lower power light of about 200 lumens is enough.

For others they need all the light they can get.

 

I have also noticed that confidence and skill levels on the bike (particularly when night mountain biking) play a huge role. If you're a skilled rider who rides with confidence in the daytime, you'll be able to get away with less light at night.

There's also other factors like whether or not you are familiar with the road / trail you're riding on.

 

Then the shape of the beam is also a factor to consider.

A beam with a wider spread tends to instill more confidence as you can see more than just whats directly in front of you.

A spot or focussed beam may be bright as hell, but if its only lighting up a 1m wide patch of road or trail, you're gonna get at least a little freaked out at higher speeds.