Originally Posted by
CHenry
I think this arrangement is more interesting to look at than to see with. I have tried it with dual generator lights, and the arrangement can be a bit of a pain, especially if you want to turn on a secondary light while riding. I ended up moving my lights closer to the cockpit, on a modified bar outrigger for a computer. (Also, if you have cantilever brakes, there are considerations of interference with the lamp housing and the brake arms and straddle wires. If you have a front rack with braze-ons, you can buy hangers that let you place the lamp toward the forward edge of the rack underside, below the bag bottom and out of the way of the fork. This still doesn't get you around the switching inconvenience, but it looks good and works better than a fork mount, IMO.)
The idea of illuminating rough spots better by having the beam closer to the pavement does not result in enough benefit to outweigh the inconvenience of having the switches out of easy reach.
When using dual generator lights, having the secondary light mounted a little higher has merit so that you can more easily reach the switch. This is most important with halogen generator lights, such as the Schmidt E6 since you get more light from a single E6 climbing steep hills at speeds below 10-11 mph. I know some randonneurs who mount their primary light on the fork blade and the secondary at the fork crown for this reason.
I disagree with trading off light effectiveness for switch convenience. Most bike lights are marginal at best. The lights shown in the OPs post are much more effective when mounted in the position shown. I had similar lights for my first season of randonneuring and was very pleased with their performance when mounted on the fork blades.
With battery lights, there is little reason to turn one light on and off while riding unless there is a need to conserve batteries. However, in such case, a better strategy would be to carry a spare set of batteries so you can run both lights all the time.