Ok, so I don’t think you’re wrong, I think this an excellent opportunity to talk about beam pattern.
You’ve been night riding for a long time, since the point where technology was only capable of making a narrow, round spot as a beam pattern, so the only thing really differentiating lights was brightness, and beams being equal, brightness is a viable way to compare two lights. When both helmet and bar lights are narrow spots, you rely on the helmet because the bar light beam is all over the place, not where you’re looking, but where your wheel needs to be pointing, which as a trail curves around isn’t always (and quite often isn’t) where you need to be able to see out ahead at speed.
Now, we can make any beam pattern we want, highly optimized to specific applications. You mention running the bar as a “flood” and helmet as a “spot” but I’m guessing that is, if anything, a wider angle version of a round symmetric optic, which means you’re projecting light wide to the sides AND up and down, causing the foreground to be higher intensity, which causes the imbalance and pupillary response. This is precisely why we make our handlebar light a super wide beam horizontally, but not vertically, so that the intensity of light on the trail surface is as even as possible from right in front of your wheel to way down the trail. You’re angling your standard round flashlight optic up to avoid the high intensity foreground, what if you could angle it down so you’re not sacrificing the throw down trail, but also without the imbalance? That’s our approach, basically.
This is also why we need the brighter light on the bars. Brightness is measured in lumens, which the amount of photons coming out of the front of the light, regardless of where they go. Intensity, measured in lux, is how many lumens hit a certain surface area. If you have two lights with the same brightness, but one narrow and one wide, the wide light will cover more surface area at a lower intensity. We want the helmet and bar light to balance as well as possible for intensify on the trail, so we make the bar light brighter and wider, and the helmet less bright and narrower, so you get the contrast you mention (which comes from shadows from lights sources emitting from different locations) to better read the terrain, instead of relying essentially on the helmet light for everything, which washes out all that depth in the terrain.
Happy to discuss further, as I’ve said before there is always an aspect of personal preference to any setup, so if you tried our approach with our lights (not just putting any random brighter light on the bars, but two lights designed this way purposefully) and didn’t like it, that would be totally fine, but I’d love to get you out to an event or a local shop with lights to try them out, for science!
Nov. 23, 2024, 10:07 p.m. - OutboundLighting
Ok, so I don’t think you’re wrong, I think this an excellent opportunity to talk about beam pattern. You’ve been night riding for a long time, since the point where technology was only capable of making a narrow, round spot as a beam pattern, so the only thing really differentiating lights was brightness, and beams being equal, brightness is a viable way to compare two lights. When both helmet and bar lights are narrow spots, you rely on the helmet because the bar light beam is all over the place, not where you’re looking, but where your wheel needs to be pointing, which as a trail curves around isn’t always (and quite often isn’t) where you need to be able to see out ahead at speed. Now, we can make any beam pattern we want, highly optimized to specific applications. You mention running the bar as a “flood” and helmet as a “spot” but I’m guessing that is, if anything, a wider angle version of a round symmetric optic, which means you’re projecting light wide to the sides AND up and down, causing the foreground to be higher intensity, which causes the imbalance and pupillary response. This is precisely why we make our handlebar light a super wide beam horizontally, but not vertically, so that the intensity of light on the trail surface is as even as possible from right in front of your wheel to way down the trail. You’re angling your standard round flashlight optic up to avoid the high intensity foreground, what if you could angle it down so you’re not sacrificing the throw down trail, but also without the imbalance? That’s our approach, basically. This is also why we need the brighter light on the bars. Brightness is measured in lumens, which the amount of photons coming out of the front of the light, regardless of where they go. Intensity, measured in lux, is how many lumens hit a certain surface area. If you have two lights with the same brightness, but one narrow and one wide, the wide light will cover more surface area at a lower intensity. We want the helmet and bar light to balance as well as possible for intensify on the trail, so we make the bar light brighter and wider, and the helmet less bright and narrower, so you get the contrast you mention (which comes from shadows from lights sources emitting from different locations) to better read the terrain, instead of relying essentially on the helmet light for everything, which washes out all that depth in the terrain. Happy to discuss further, as I’ve said before there is always an aspect of personal preference to any setup, so if you tried our approach with our lights (not just putting any random brighter light on the bars, but two lights designed this way purposefully) and didn’t like it, that would be totally fine, but I’d love to get you out to an event or a local shop with lights to try them out, for science!