LED light bar. Before I pull the trigger...

Other Types of Lights LED Spotlights
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I measure what is there. I eliminate resistance, improve thermal path, and do every trick in the book to maximize performance. Then I stick the light in a light box built by guys that know what they’re doing and tested against dozens of known lights for it’s synchronization.

Plucking lumens, as is suggested, has nothing to do with it. LED’s make light. Overdriven or otherwise. 60mph or 100. The light is the same. Your ability to use it may vary. I’ve stuck a few of my lights out the sun roof of our car at 70mph and they far exceed the factory high beams, easily producing light that aids the driver’s vision in determining obstruction. Nothing “thin” about it. Video camera’s are well known for being weak in seeing what we see, as are high end DSLR or any other camera. Even the video shows the LED blowing away the factory high beams and giving much higher definition to the sides of the road and it’s contained “obstacles”. I am a photographer. Light is light. The soup mix analogy is pretty wack. I have successfully photographed at 180mph, and in caves with no tripod. Making use of available light is, like so many other things, an adaptive skill.

Your “pair” of 35 watt HID’s are effectively producing 70 watts of light. How many watts is your S2200 producing? Not a very fair comparison, is it? What you are probably seeing is a higher CRI from the much lower Kelvin temperature of the HID’s. Hence your feeling of a “rich” lighting environment. HID’s are what, 3500 Kelvin? Compared to a 5000K MT-G2? And about 12 watts vs 35 x 2? Give your MT-G2 12-16A and see how it fares…

I put a Cree XHP70 in an Olight M3X Triton and saw it pull 14.49A from the 8.4V power supply (2 Efest 35A 18650’s). The light box showed me 6241 lumens from a single emitter (4 die, single emitter) Showing this crazy light to my folks, they were blown away at how a 400 sq. foot room was illuminated with that single light source. Mount that on an ample heat sink and cool it with 60mph winds and you’ll be able to run it as long as you wish. My cop neighbor freaks out regularly on the lights I show him, outside at night in a country setting with distances up to a mile easily obtained. Perhaps the lumens I’m plucking are real. Let me show you… look right here


Images taken with Canon G1X, on a tripod, at 1/2 second exposure ISO1600 f/5.6 in manual focus, manual settings. 2 second timer. Always the same. I’ve been using this setting for a while now, shooting all the lights I build and many are very used to seeing that 55gal red oil drum at 97 yds away. Illuminating an area the size of a football field is quite a lot of proof, I would think.

But then again, perhaps your eyes are getting too tired to drive 60mph. Even I can’t “pluck” enough lumens to help you with that. :wink:

Nothing personal, perceived or implied. It is what it is, and we all call it like we see it.

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That 16 amp MT-G2, how long can it be run at full power for? And how long until it starts to drop lumens? Or are you claiming it can run like that, and never drop lumens, for as long as the power can be supplied to it? How many hours do you think a 16 amp MT-GTs life will be in say a long haul truck? Lets keep this in perspective. Had you tried that in the first place, you wouldnt be having this little tiffy about ‘plucked’. “Nothing personal, perceived or implied. It is what it is, and we all call it like we see it.” To clarify, plucking was not meant to imply erroneous or made up (I did not say FIGURES plucked from thin air). I simply stated you generate lumens, recognising that the LEDs are capable of more output by upping the amps. Ive read threads, it isnt news and it is already factored into my posts. But I then qualified it in this context, theres heat issues when driven hard, issues that wont be easier to deal with in an automotive application.

My HIDs are 5000k.

In a headlight, not a spotlight, good luck cramming in all that necessary heat sinking to overdrive an XML at 7 amps, or an MT-G2 at 16 to outperform a HID, and getting the heat out from behind the headlight, and maintaining full brightness for hours of continuous use, near the radiator and whatever other coolers are in that area. Let alone keep them dry, and sealed in wet weather with all that heat sinking and cooling fins etc in that confined limited space between the rear of the light and the body. One of these things, maybe, all of them is required though, and not in the ideal car, but any car. But hey, lets argue semantics and the hypothetical, lets not let the actual limits effect things? Fans in these things, theyve been discussed here already Im fairly certain, IIRC, the consensus and list of perceived problems didnt sound promising

I have tried to drive with the pair of X40s I purchased, out the sunroof too, I held one and my partner held the other, my X40s have HE2s in one, and Sony vtc5s in the other, they are stock and could possibly run for hours without breaks. Over low beams they were of course far superior, but they would not be suitable as low beam and wouldnt perform anywhere near as well if modified to qualify in that position. As far as factory high beam, they were not much better if any than the standard high beam lights, certainly less performance than my HID spotlights, both punch and spill. I did this to consider if a light bar could be worth the effort or not for normal highway driving, I wanted to see if the MT-G2 would make a difference thus the s2200 has also had the same ‘test’ and in combo with one and two X40s. Again, hotrod flashlight has very little relevance, it can not run like that for hours, with vibration etc. Hasnt it been noted that at times, LEDs can relfow themselves off the stars in hand held hotrod applications., let alone on the front of a car with its constant vibrating and bouncing over bumps and pot holes etc.

And what happens when we want to build a technical throw king, we switch to smaller, lower lumen XPGs and XPEs. HID, has no such concerns. HID can punch 1000m down the road, in a beam well over a metre wide at 1/3 maybe even 1/5 those distances. A pencil beam spreads nicely at distance.

If my HIDs performed like those flashlights, Id be very disappointed. If my flashlights performed like those flashlights, I would not be disappointed at all. At idle, pulling into my driveway, Id be fine with that light. At 60 mph, not so much. Id prefer 100 watt Halogen to that, let alone HID. Ive had Hella Halogen lights that if aimed where youve aimed those flashlights, they would also light up that shed to the same standard as the ‘hot spot’. The hot spot in your images is fine but I can get good light, from Narva 225 HID spreads, to 600m. In your images, the spill is thin, and to correct that, you lose more throw, or add LEDs. So now we move on to many many LEDs, and well, we might as well just stick with the simple 70 - 100 watt HID pair, instead of getting into 200+ watts of LED as many light bars are. Remember, we cant hot rod them and then make them run for hours, with the conditions of automotive use so we need many more to make up the losses of not driving them.

I get good usable light 300 metres away, not 1/2 a lux, but good light. I probably get to 1/2 lux at maybe 800m (not tested, guessed, its 1/2 a lux, who cares? I cant use it in its application anyway). If I upgraded to the Narva in Pencils (or Hella Rally 4000 Predators), I would be pushing 1km, with crazy bright light on the road for a good 700m (provided it was dead flat and straight). Thats at 50w per light.

Yes, LEDs can be plenty bright, but not in an automotive application for the same wattage as HID. You can not deal with the heat to use less LEDs to beat the numbers HID uses.

I understand more amps means more output from an LED, I was never disputing it. I was however factoring in the real world, and the application in reality, not simply a torch through a sunroof.

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US laws prohibit HID high beams, so it’s pretty irrelevant. Off road was the question, where light bars are legal. HID’s can’t be dimmed or shut on/off repeatedly or they die a quick death. Again making your point mute. HID’s are used for low beams only in cars here. Because of their fragile nature when turned on and the long cool down period required when turned off before they can be turned back on.

I can’t speak for people in Godforsaken places as I don’t the rules and laws of the entire world. I do know that we here in the US have restrictions on the headlights of cars, trucks, motorcycles, bicycles, anything that is on a public road. So, given where I am and what I have to deal with, it’s very relevant to use high powered LED emitters for off road applications.

They can be heat sinked and run off the 12V system of a vehicle. The electronics can and should be potted to endure the vibrations and bumps just like when rifle mounting. Water might hurt the electronics, will certainly ruin reflectors, but not necessarily the LED emitters. Not any more so than a splash of cold water on a hot HID. Oh, and don’t touch your bulb or it’ll burn out in a few hours.

And the new XHP70 CAN deal with the heat, and CAN run long periods thousands of hours in fact. That is, of course, where they can legally be used.

As I pointed out, I wasn’t offended at the accusations or the impudent choice of words. Just wanted to clarify for possibly new readers that I am not making up anything, no plucking going on…real or imagined.

Oh, and while we’re talking about LED’s in cars, perhaps you should look at the headlights of high end cars such as Audi’s, it’s been done and is now moving into laser realms.

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Wait, you decide a word in the Queens English only has one meaning despite that meaning requiring several more words that were not present, and Im ‘impudent’ as a result? Yes I mentioned you, but not in the manner you interpreted it, that interpretation would be your doing. Play it off all you like, the fact you suggest that was impudent reveals more than you want it too. Plucked was your craw, you ASSUMED, and you were wrong. Plucked means pulled, and ‘plucking lumens’ does not mean the same thing as ‘plucking lumen numbers from thin air’. You drew the bow to link that to speheres that I had never even mentioned. But hey, keep blaming me for your error. Context given by the following sentence should have cleared that up, if there was doubt. Now if you want to get into the quality of the text, sort your own issues first, its ‘moot’. Its not silent, its moot.

They are hardly fragile. Gen 5 ballasts can refire to 100 % brightness if refired within 15 or 20 seconds. It was a selling point. Kind of contrary to your assertion there.

Legal in the US hey? Lets run with your logic then. In Australia, where I am, you cant legally retrofit HID to any standard equipment headlight, but LEDs are not legal in them either, so your point was moot. And your point was in response to my statements, and conversation with Bort. Not the OP. At best, relevant nations were Canada and Australia. You entered this conversation, you didnt instigate it. The conversation being a subset of the OP topic, not the topic of the OP.

New LEDs may, or may not, prove to be the answer. Their ability to throw, and to even do what it does without artifacts, is certainly in question last I read, here in the thread discussing them.

Yeah high end. Good luck with that.

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The H4 LED replacements are real, with real people using them and preferring them to the best options in in conventional and HID.

Blue tint seems to have some issues for many people, and the LEDs are 4200 to 4300K.

After two decades of heatsinks in PCs with fairly high thermal loads, how to do it is well known. Active cooling in flashlights can’t be far off for the high output stuff, so get used to it. First real change IMHO in the last 5 years or so of incremental gains.

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input voltage starts at 90V… not so useful in automotive environment