Hella 4000 Lumens?
- Thread starter fishEH
- Start date
It depends on whether they are halogen or HID and whether they have freeform (FF) reflectors or not. Rallye 4000's are also offered in LED. If they're halogen, it also depends on what bulbs are used. And for every light, it depends on the shape of the reflector/beam and what distance you take the measurement.
To give you a rough idea, the LED's produce the most lumens per watt so if you buy enough 3 or 10 watt LED's, you will get more light out of the limits of your power source (battery and alternator). But LED's are also the most costly. Halogen gives the most lumens per dollar. So if you're more limited by budget, you will get more light.
I'm guessing a Vision-X 8" single-stacked EVO prime bar (4 x 10W) puts out about the same light as a halogen Rallye 4000 but the Hella lamp costs 1/4th as much. You could put four of them up for the price of one Vision-X. Or you could put four Vision-X bars and get four times the light as four halogen Rallye 4000's.
Another two things to consider is the available beam shapes and the color rendering index. The mistake a lot of people make is to put too much light where they don't need it. It's counterproductive because it causes the driver's pupils to constrict, reducing the available light. If you need to see far down the road, you want to turn off everything else or it just interferes. This is why when you switch on your high-beams, the low-beams are disabled. Some people think it's because the nanny regulators are trying to limit their lumen output but that's not the case. It's about beam control for your own sake.
The CRI on HID and LED lights are typically very poor, and it's usually excellent with the halogens. If you don't care about light quality and color rendering, then the output and efficiency advantages of HID and LED are big. But if seeing accurate colors matters, then Halogen is the only way to go.
I have Rallye 4000's on my truck that pre-date even 3W LED's in this type of fixture. They've worked fine for over 6 years now. On my Land Rover, I don't think I'm going to mount any driving or fog lights but I want to mount a couple of work lamps. I am interested in LED but the prices are high and some tractor lights may prove smarter.
To give you a rough idea, the LED's produce the most lumens per watt so if you buy enough 3 or 10 watt LED's, you will get more light out of the limits of your power source (battery and alternator). But LED's are also the most costly. Halogen gives the most lumens per dollar. So if you're more limited by budget, you will get more light.
I'm guessing a Vision-X 8" single-stacked EVO prime bar (4 x 10W) puts out about the same light as a halogen Rallye 4000 but the Hella lamp costs 1/4th as much. You could put four of them up for the price of one Vision-X. Or you could put four Vision-X bars and get four times the light as four halogen Rallye 4000's.
Another two things to consider is the available beam shapes and the color rendering index. The mistake a lot of people make is to put too much light where they don't need it. It's counterproductive because it causes the driver's pupils to constrict, reducing the available light. If you need to see far down the road, you want to turn off everything else or it just interferes. This is why when you switch on your high-beams, the low-beams are disabled. Some people think it's because the nanny regulators are trying to limit their lumen output but that's not the case. It's about beam control for your own sake.
The CRI on HID and LED lights are typically very poor, and it's usually excellent with the halogens. If you don't care about light quality and color rendering, then the output and efficiency advantages of HID and LED are big. But if seeing accurate colors matters, then Halogen is the only way to go.
I have Rallye 4000's on my truck that pre-date even 3W LED's in this type of fixture. They've worked fine for over 6 years now. On my Land Rover, I don't think I'm going to mount any driving or fog lights but I want to mount a couple of work lamps. I am interested in LED but the prices are high and some tractor lights may prove smarter.
Why? It was a pretty informative post, and (to me) right on the money.KyleT said:
"Way back when" we had a huge pile of LEDs left over from one science project, I found that mixing one amber LED per three to five white LEDs makes a great difference for the eyes. Blows me why no one else came up with the same idea.
Informative? Yes and no. Some good general info, but I'm still no closer to an actual answer.
I have two 4000 Euro beam and two 4000 Fog beam.
So how many lumens do new 4000's, Euro and Fog, with stock bulbs put out?
I ask b/c I'm looking at Spot and Fog LED lights that throw 1500 and 2000, respectively. They're metal housed, waterproof, 2.25" x 2.75", and are $70-100 each.
I have two 4000 Euro beam and two 4000 Fog beam.
So how many lumens do new 4000's, Euro and Fog, with stock bulbs put out?
I ask b/c I'm looking at Spot and Fog LED lights that throw 1500 and 2000, respectively. They're metal housed, waterproof, 2.25" x 2.75", and are $70-100 each.
HID is fine. grab some hella 4k's and retrofit the HID's into them. you will effectively have a very very very similar output to the true 4000 HID but alot less cost.
for HID you want to stick with 4300k to 4500k. or around 3000k for a fog only as it will be amber. HID blows halogen out of the water in many aspects (when done properly). the color is nearer that of the sun, less energy is used to produce more light (if you run 55w HID's you will rival the sun (slight exaggeration but it is freaking bright).
Pictures will not show what the eye will see, other than estimates of light beam pattern or hot spots or shadows from crappy lenses or reflectors.
Lumens are not the final answer. there is a reason why a set of hella 500 is 50 bucks, and one hella 4k is $120. there is no telling what those rally 4k LED's are, but there will be a big difference between those and the rigid style MINI LED bars IMO. I will venture to guess though that the beam pattern will not be as crisp though.
i have never used the LED's. only played with display models, and it seemed to me that even though they are bright, the light was scattered and washed out at distance.(across the shop...)
put some 100 w in the fogs and you will essentially have cornering beams (cornering dont have the bulb shield in them though) regular fogs are 55w.
for HID you want to stick with 4300k to 4500k. or around 3000k for a fog only as it will be amber. HID blows halogen out of the water in many aspects (when done properly). the color is nearer that of the sun, less energy is used to produce more light (if you run 55w HID's you will rival the sun (slight exaggeration but it is freaking bright).
Pictures will not show what the eye will see, other than estimates of light beam pattern or hot spots or shadows from crappy lenses or reflectors.
Lumens are not the final answer. there is a reason why a set of hella 500 is 50 bucks, and one hella 4k is $120. there is no telling what those rally 4k LED's are, but there will be a big difference between those and the rigid style MINI LED bars IMO. I will venture to guess though that the beam pattern will not be as crisp though.
i have never used the LED's. only played with display models, and it seemed to me that even though they are bright, the light was scattered and washed out at distance.(across the shop...)
put some 100 w in the fogs and you will essentially have cornering beams (cornering dont have the bulb shield in them though) regular fogs are 55w.
You guys are missing the point. The only way to compare two lights qithout having them turned on right next to eachother is by lumens. Yes, I could do some HID conversion blah blah blah. Not what I'm looking for.
I HUGE advantage to the LED's I'm looking at is their VERY small.
4 4000's on anything but a full safari rack is ridiculous looking. But four small LED's in much more attractive.
Here's what they look like:
Here's the Spot light(1500 lumens), $70:
Here's the Flood light(2000 lumens) $100:
I HUGE advantage to the LED's I'm looking at is their VERY small.
4 4000's on anything but a full safari rack is ridiculous looking. But four small LED's in much more attractive.
Here's what they look like:
Here's the Spot light(1500 lumens), $70:
Here's the Flood light(2000 lumens) $100:
doesnt look very flooding to me....
http://www.rallylights.com/SearchResult.aspx?CategoryID=359
would be a much better bet...... and small. you can remove the shield to make it 100% light and not have the cutoff, or trim it so it would essentially be a "high beam" like a bixenon stuck on high. (edit, but using halogen bulbs)
Light efficiency is more important than lumens IMO.
http://www.rallylights.com/SearchResult.aspx?CategoryID=359
would be a much better bet...... and small. you can remove the shield to make it 100% light and not have the cutoff, or trim it so it would essentially be a "high beam" like a bixenon stuck on high. (edit, but using halogen bulbs)
Light efficiency is more important than lumens IMO.
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fishEH said:
You can't compare lumens objectively on two different fixtures if you don't know the method and distance at which it was measured and the beam pattern. It's just marketing crank. Between two different vendors, the numbers are totally meaningless. It would be more meaningful to compare an isolux chart but it's not that easy to get a legible one from even the top brands. I think Hella only publishes it to compare their beam patterns, not objectively specify output.
I can tell you that a 4000 will be brighter than a few 3W LED's. If you want more light than a large reflector 4000 out of LED's, you're going to need 4 x 10W or 12 x 3W which are going to be $400 - 500+ depending on the quality of the housing. But even then you are limited to 20 or 40 degrees. Getting wide-angles out of LED's is difficult. The 4000 fog's isolux shows a lot more than 40 degrees. Step up to 8 x 10W LED's and you will get significantly more light output than a 100w HID 4000 in the same size package, but at a corresponding price premium.
I've seen some quotes for 40w "Xenon" (HID) 4000's that claim "3225 lumens." I've also seen "10000 lumens" claimed for the 100w HID capsules (I think they were claiming the output for a pair). Halogen 4000's have been claimed for ~1600 lumens. I assume that's for the 55w bulb not the 100w halogen. Figure a 10W LED puts out about 850 lumens so if you buy enough of them in your fixture(s), you can go pretty bright.
I focused on brightness, lumen output because that's what you're asking for but there's a lot more involved to "seeing." More often than not, brightness hinders seeing, especially if light quality is sacraficed for efficiency and output. Look at any mercury or sodium vapor street light for an example. They put out a ton of light -- a 1000W HPS bulb puts out over 140,000 ANSI lumens but the light quality is very poor and you will strain to see some things. Metal Halide is slightly better. Go to any Walmart parking lot at night and you will find 100's of thousands of metal-halide lumens. Can you see all that well? The automotive HID lamps are also metal halide. My town has now installed LED street lights all over (I heard they were coming to Walmart too). Except for the smaller fixtures, they are hard to distinguish from MH by the light quality (but are much nicer than the HPS they replaced, though quite a bit lower output). But if you just want to bench race spec's, go ahead.
KyleT said:
Especially if you're trying to winch out a vehicle with a dead engine at night with an electric planetary winch. In which case a bright 10W worklight would be very useful but anything over 50W would be unwelcome no matter how bright it was.
Ben said:
Or if your walking up a snowy rocky hill after helping guys get trucks up it for what seems like hours at the end of the day and the ass at the top decides to "light" the way for you with all of his lights on high making a 50foot climb seem like your passing into the afterlife... I've never wanted an air rifle so bad at a single moment
X2 on the pool
mbs13 said:and the ass at the top decides to "light" the way for you with all of his lights on high making a 50foot climb seem like your passing into the afterlife... I've never wanted an air rifle so bad at a single moment
That's pretty funny.
The most practical use of super bright lights on a vehicle is for going very fast in low light. In this situation you need to see far down range because you are approaching quickly. The lights need to be very bright because of the inverse square law that applies to light over distance. They also need to be very focused (pencil beam) because any stray light on the periphery only reflects back into the driver's eyes and reduces their pupilary opening and vision. Lighting nearby objects is useless because at speed, you would have needed to see them from hundreds of feet away before you could react or do anything about them.
At lower speeds, there is normally less interest in lighting objects far away. Lighting nearby objects with excessive luminosity is often counterproductive. Intense light is reflected back at the driver's eyes restricting their pupils. The end result is that only the most directly illuminated objects are visible whereas the areas not most intensely illuminated are blacked-out.
The eye can adjust to different light levels. It does this by two means. First, the pupil can enlarge or constrict quickly to adjust the available light to the retina -- much the same way an aperature ring on a camera lens opens and closes to adjust the aperature and the available light. The eye also adjusts more slowly by a chemical means that enhances or limits it's light sensitivty. This is the eye's ability for dark adaptation. The eye can take 15 to 30 minutes to become fully "dark adapted." This is why astronomers and other people who work in low light take great pains to avoid light ruining their eye's adapation. They know they will see more dim objects if it's kept dark around them. By using sun-like automotive lighting, a person assures that their eyes will be adjusted to the highest intensity levels of light -- and therefore they will only see the objects so illuminated.
At lower speeds, there is normally less interest in lighting objects far away. Lighting nearby objects with excessive luminosity is often counterproductive. Intense light is reflected back at the driver's eyes restricting their pupils. The end result is that only the most directly illuminated objects are visible whereas the areas not most intensely illuminated are blacked-out.
The eye can adjust to different light levels. It does this by two means. First, the pupil can enlarge or constrict quickly to adjust the available light to the retina -- much the same way an aperature ring on a camera lens opens and closes to adjust the aperature and the available light. The eye also adjusts more slowly by a chemical means that enhances or limits it's light sensitivty. This is the eye's ability for dark adaptation. The eye can take 15 to 30 minutes to become fully "dark adapted." This is why astronomers and other people who work in low light take great pains to avoid light ruining their eye's adapation. They know they will see more dim objects if it's kept dark around them. By using sun-like automotive lighting, a person assures that their eyes will be adjusted to the highest intensity levels of light -- and therefore they will only see the objects so illuminated.
Aaaaaaaaaand I'm right where I started. Some interesting discussion, info, and theories though. I suppose the only way to really tell is a side by side comparison.
fishEH said:You guys are missing the point. The only way to compare two lights qithout having them turned on right next to eachother is by lumens. Yes, I could do some HID conversion blah blah blah. Not what I'm looking for.
I HUGE advantage to the LED's I'm looking at is their VERY small.
4 4000's on anything but a full safari rack is ridiculous looking. But four small LED's in much more attractive.
Here's what they look like:
Here's the Spot light(1500 lumens), $70:
Here's the Flood light(2000 lumens) $100:
Those would be awesome in the pool....get some colored lenses and strobe relay for them....neat!