Thread: Too Bright
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Old 11-15-13 | 09:50 AM
  #78  
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cyccommute
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Originally Posted by acidfast7
but good luck getting people to understand that lumens don't matter, lux matters and where the lux is located should be regulated just like it is with an auto headlight
I'm pretty sure you have me on ignore but here goes anyway: I've tried to explain this to you several times. Lux is a valid measurement but so is lumen output. Lux is not valid if you don't have a distance measurement. My 650 lumen lights have a lux measurement of 1.3 million. What does that tell you about the light coverage. It also has a lux measurement of 29 lux. Which measurement do you want to use? For bonus points, how far way from the source is each measurement?

Just giving a lux number for a light tells you nothing about the light without the distance to the target. To put it in chemical terms, I have a reaction with compound A and compound B going to compound C. If compound A has a concentration of 4 moles per liter and compound B has a concentration of 2 moles per liter while compound C has a concentration of 6 moles per liter, how long has the reaction been going on and what was the starting concentration of A and B? You can't tell me because you don't have enough information. If I told you a rate constant, you could figure out the problem but without it you can't.

Same holds for a lux measurement. Without knowledge of the distance to the target, the measurement is meaningless. If I have the lumens, I can calculate a lux at any point from the source to infinity. I can't determine if the light is bright or not based on just the lux measurement. A 29 lux light could be a 1 lumen light measured millimeters from the source or a million lumen light measured 10 km from the source. I can't tell and neither can you.
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