Originally Posted by
Athens80
Agreed. I think that is part of the reason why the Dinotte 140R appears as a brighter light at its center; it's not as bright as the 300R but the 300R's light is immediately spread over a bigger lens than the 140's.
From this page:
NEW Quad RED Taillight with built in battery ? DiNotte Lighting USA Online Store
The Quad RED replaces the DiNotte 300R. It is 50 grams lighter, substantially smaller and has even better side visibility. It is approximately 30% brighter than the 300R.
What you're saying is possible, but not having seen one in person I'm not sure. Haven't been able to tell how big it is from the pics yet. If it has a bigger surface area, that could certainly work better.
You bring up a good point.
Originally Posted by
Athens80
Remember that the Dinotte tail light model numbers do not necessarily correspond evenly to actual lumens. The 300R claimed lumens is,
I read, 150. That would make sense since the new quad tail light's claimed lumens are 200. I don't think the 300R presents twice as bright as the 140R to the human eye.
mechBgon described it as:
I don't know - Dinotte used to rate it's lights by the # corresponding to the lumen output. It didn't say in a quick search on their site, I'm not sure that it's true that the #'s which are obviously meant to sound like lumen counts are not actually lumen counts. My 140L seemed like it was probably 140 lumens, relative to my 200L.
Originally Posted by
Athens80
The 300R's lumens are below (if 150) or in the middle (if 300) of a single brake light of a car. As you and I say, light is more bothersome to the human eye the more concentrated it is. I find the 300R on high steady to be roughly as bothersome as a car's incandescent tail light (not the brightest bulb there is) even up close.
I'm not sure what else to say - your post sounds fairly reasonable in it's reasoning (even if I disagree), so I don't really want to put it this way but I can't think of any other way to put it - I just don't believe it. Every time there's a lighting discussion, someone is trying to make wild claims that bike lights are nowhere near car lights and it's simply not true. I've seen my car tail lights on my garage wall, I've seen my Dinotte 200L (for sure supposed to be 200 lumens) on my garage wall. I've ridden behind cars on the road, and I've had people ride behind me with my 140L on the road as well. Despite being on steady, the 140L was simply worse than the car tail lights - lots of complaints, none with the car tail lights.
I don't know if the 300 is an eyesore or not, as I do not own one. Since I couldn't find a pic showing me it's relative size, I can't really make an educated guess about the point you bring up about a larger surface area. It could be true - certainly the 140L was a pinpoint of light. Maybe they did a much better job of fixing that in this version.
I can only say that I definitely think bike rear lighting exists right now that is the same or brighter than a car tail light. And that there's definitely a point where rear lighting becomes severely obnoxious. Whether the 300 on steady reaches that I don't know. It's definitely going to be *far* more distracting if it was on flashing. (Though that's not to say that most people would run it on flashing at night).
Originally Posted by
Athens80
A crucial factor in the youtube link posted earlier which you've referred to is that the Dinotte in that video was flashing. Flashing lights appear brighter to the human eye than does the same light on steady. You can't easily compare the actual brightness of a flashing bike light and a steady car tail light or brake light. And the same LED flashing affects us differently than on steady. Flashing may be more valuable in the daytime when you're competing with the sun; at night I run my brighter lights on steady.
From
REAR LIGHTING CONFIGURATIONS FOR WINTER MAINTENANCE VEHICLES[/QUOTE]
None of those apply to taking a video then taking a screenshot of it and posting it as a pic, though.
Someone else mentioned a bright rear light with a built in light sensor that adjusts the light output - that definitely sounded interesting.