I'd like some input from people who have used 3000k HID bulbs on their cars, trucks, and/or bikes. I'm specifically looking for information regarding any combination of night time/ Wet weather/Blacktop/dark pave road visibility. The reason i ask about night time wet weather is that i would like to upgrade the lighting on my car as well as my bike. I have blacktop roads around my greater area and i use a combination of Silverstars (Low beam) and "CoolBlue" (High Beam) and during nighttime wet weather conditions i have a hard time seeing the actual road surface. I have done a little research regarding why this is and have concluded that the color of the lights cannot completely penetrate the water on the roadway and rather than illuminating the surface, the beam gets deflected into the atmosphere. since Fog lights use a "Amber" color in a wide angle reflector and can penetrate fg and wet weather with relative ease, i was curious to know what other's experience with the "Yellow" 3000k HID bulbs were with a more focused stock reflector.

Please post up if you've got something you'd like to share. i'd be most grateful!

 

WHew, lucky find, I'm a lighting *****...

The urban myth, is that "blue" bulbs bounce back light from water droplets, and yellow lights penetrate them... This is totally false, although seems to be true based on people's impressions...

But basically, people put HID Plug and Play kits in their cars which are subjectively blue, and they get blinded when there is rain, water etc... What is happening, is that the filament of a Plug and Play kit, is not in the correct spot as the Filament of the real Halogen bulb, so you get stray light... Glare. Which ends up above the cutoff, and bouncing back at your eyes. So people think blue or white = bad. However it's the glare that is the issue.

Blue is bad for your vision because you can not focus on it well. The cones in the eye which react to the Blue color are outside the retina, where you focus, so you can never really hone in on blue things. Try looking at a blue LED in a dark room, jog your head back and forth, and you will see what I mean, it kinda gives trails.

Water Droplets are wayyyyyyy too small to do any sort of refracting or absorbing with any respect to color. In the ocean you have Full color down to 10-15 feet. You would have to have a mile of fog in order to equal that volume of water to start selectively blocking/refracting any color over another. Color has nothing to do with the light bouncing back at you during fog or wet weather.

Yellow/red however is easier for the eye to focus on, the red/yellow orange cones in your eye are tightly packed in your retina, and you react quickly to them. However if you have only orange/yellow you miss out on color, which I believe is important to our vision and hence safety.

Blue colored bulbs are crap. Yellow "weather" bulbs are possibly better than some cheap HID kits, however I would venture that up to about 5000k of an OEM varietey HID bulb is perfect. OEM bulbs are 4300k out of the box, and will get up to about 6000k by the end of their life. I am not saying that 3000k are bad, but it's really just a filter over a 4300k bulb, and I believe color is important. An even distribution of color is better than any one color.

Just a little rant, if you have any more specific questions I'd be happy to comment.

Daniel Stern is the man... here's a good link explaining it.

http://www.danielsternlighting.com/t...ght_color.html

 

This is a good cutoff, where light stays below, and doesn't bounce back up at you:


This is VERY VERY BAD Cutoff, it will blind you and everyone else around you. This is the real reason people blame HIDs for poor vision in wet weather.



The bluer the bulb, the less light you actually get, up to a point. When you are sacrificing color for lumenous output, there's a trade off.

4300k = 3500 lumens
5000k = 3000 lumens
6500k = 2000 lumens
8000k = 1500 lumens
10000k = 1000 lumens

Something like above is true. Stock 55watt halogens (20lumens per watt) are about 1500 lumens. Reflector vs. Projector etc... also come into play for efficiency.

 

INTERESTING STUFF!

Excellent information Ocelaris, I'm glad you replied! Thank you so much for the information regarding penetration, that was exactly what i was after. The HID kit i am considering for both my car and my motorcycle is one that states that the arc is in the correct position for the stock halogen focus point. It is from HIDExpert.com. Do you have any experience with these kits and their cut-off points on cars? What you say (and illustrate perfectly i might add) about the cutoff is what i am now fearing with a conversion. I'd like to get the very best cutoff i can. If these kits do in fact keep the focus at the same spot as the factory halogen bulbs do, i see little problem, but i'd like some of your experience. It sounds like you are the go-to person for this.

thanks!

 

The only thing to look at if the filament is in the right place, is whether the lens is fluted, i.e. bumps on the front of the headlight, or if it's clear and you can see through.

Now it's not guaranteed that HIDs will work properly a halogen reflector, your mileage may vary... The problem with halogen projectors and HIDs in general, is that Halogen projectors tend to focus the light in a very tight pattern, because halogens have comparably so little light, they need to focus it. Now put 3 times that amount of light in that same reflector, and you get a very narrow beam pattern that is very bright. And your eyes adjust to the level of brightness, and now you only see those two spots in front and nothing to the sides...

There are so many combinations of lights, that the only good way to know how a PNP kit in your car will turn out, is to ask someone with the same vehicle for a wall beam pattern, and a down the road pattern. What I like to do is photoshop the picture so you get a very clear picture of what is dark and what is light:

These are TSX HID projectors with high shield:


The next 3 are from a TL Bi-Xenon Retrofit:






See how wide they are up to 25 feet in front of the car? And then it goes down the road quite a ways. A more diffuse light everywhere makes for better viewing than DOT Halogen Reflectors which end up causing Tunnel vision. Putting HIDs in Halogen Reflectors often exacerbate the problem. DOT is the US Standard, ECE is the European standard, Dot Halogen is a very narrow pattern relatively speaking.

 

I'm thingking about using 1 3000k hid for my low beam and 1 5000k hid for my high beam. i ride with the high beams on all the time. what you do about the road visibility on that? or should i just stick to 2 5000k?
thanks and sorry for bringing up a2 year old thread