Originally Posted by
Athens80
The Dinotte 300R on high steady mode is roughly as bright as an incandescent car brake light, and neither the brake light nor the 300R on high steady are inappropriately bothersome in traffic. That holds true by my eyesight and the photo approximates what I see. I don't run my brighter lights in flashing mode at night.
The other video seemed pretty convincing to me in showing that the dinote 140l was brighter than a tail light.
In your picture it fairly clearly hit the dynamic range limit of the camera so it's not displaying how bright the light is - you can tell because both lights are white, when the actual color is red. The camera's sensor gets maxed out at a certain point (with certain exposure settings, you'd need lower exposure settings to see the difference) and above that point all light no matter how much brighter looks the same - it comes across in the pic as being white.
Here's a pic that illustrates -
And another one:
Where it's white in the middle it's just saying "these could be dramatically different brightness, the camera just can't handle it". You need at least one of them being red to compare, if one is red and the other is white, the white is brighter.
That also doesn't get at that, as illustrated by your pic, the car tail light covers a much wider area - it's not a pinpoint of light. The same light over a wider area doesn't affect the eyes as much.
I'm not saying a 140l is a hazard on the road though, at least if it's aimed on the street and not directly back into someone's eyes. But it's absurd to pretend that bike tail lights have not already reached the point of being as bright or brighter than car tail lights, like some posters have tried to say.
P.S. I re-read your post and see that you're saying the photo is about what you feel you see, that's just difficult to debate over the internet, so I guess I don't have much to add. My 140l according to what my own eyes see is definitely brighter than a car tail light (not absurdly so, but brighter) so a light with a little more than double the light output seems like it has to be even brighter.
I don't for sure if the 300r is actually bothersome in traffic, as I do not own one and have not seen anyone with one. I have recently several front lights that are bothersome in traffic, even though the person is on the complete opposite side of the street from where I am in my car, so eventually bike lighting does hit that point.