I guess this thread should read "How much light is enough 'for the road'?"

When I ride...it's usually a short commute to work...or just trails. I don't feel like I need much light riding to work b/c my streets aren't terribly busy, I can bunnyhop over on to the sidewalk to dodge drunk traffic.

On the trail at night? As much light as I can get. I'm currently running around 1200-1400lm from a couple of P7's. I'm in the process of building a triple R5 for another 900-1100'ish. Technical trail riding can be done with a 140lm Coleman flashlight. (my light died so I had to Zip this to my helmet) You just have to go slow. It's much more fun to burn a hole in the night and go as fast as you would in the daytime.


Just my opinion though. As much as possible.

FlashBak is proving itself...to others besides me now.
 

Update on FlashBak Rear Light. I still love my light and I keep finding more and more reviews of the light online. It seems that every review I've stumbled across is positive in their findings. Several of the sites, even said that the FlashBak is the brightest light they have tested...and their testing included the Mars and PB SuperFlash. I'm attaching a few links to the web sites who have reviewed and tested the FlashBak. Check 'em out.


http://bicycledesign.net/2010/05/flashbak/

http://www.bikecommuters.com/2009/11...-safety-light/

http://www.bikehacks.com/bikehacks/2010/06/fb.html

http://austinontwowheels.org/2009/10...-the-flashbak/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cargonistas/4149030890/

the challenge is getting headlights with good beam shape and cut-off. It's easy to pack a lot of light in a reflector but a powerful cone shaped beam wastes half the light off the road and into others eyes.

Well for me to coexist means I have to first exist. If I want to stay alive on the dark rural roads I ride on a bright light is a must. I'm not the fastest in the world but do get to speeds over 20 mph for short distances on pretty much every ride. The roads I ride have little or no shoulders so the margin for error is quite small. Add in the raccoons, porcupines and skunks that I have to dodge and you'll understand the need for bright lights. Not to mention the occasional moose, they tend to not show up well even when I'm in my car. They also could care less about moving for a car, much less a little ol' biker. So put me dead center in the class of those that believe that there is no such thing as too much light:thumb:

Yuppers.

Quick, name five such lights. Bonus points if they're not made expressly to abide by German regulations.

If the light is entirely, stupidly installed...as in flat level to the road and aimed into infinity...maybe some is wasted. But I see very few people that have lights so aimed. It only takes a few rides to notice that the light isn't hitting the ground and is being wasted. Most of us have our lights pointed at the ground at some point in front of us. Aiming the light is a much simpler process too.

Given that the light coming from a parabolic reflector leaves the light in a conic shape, there is only a finite amount of spread to the vast majority of the light being output by the lamp. There is some scatter but even shaped beams with cutoffs scatter some light.

The beauty of lights is that you can see...and get instant feedback...on where the light is going and can adjust accordingly.

^^^ There's a big difference between scatter and direct light. Crouch down in front of a car headlight to see what I mean.

I see plenty of people on rides that have good lights and they are aimed 50 yards down the road, making the light pretty useless..

I use 2 lights and stagger them.. My thrower is aimed about 15-20 yards and my EDC-MCE light is aimed about 6-10 yards in front of me, so I have good vision of what is in front of me and down the road if an obstruction is in the road..

The amount of light needed is also dependent on how fast you prefer to ride at night..

So which two lights are you specifically using?

I disagree about 50 yards being useless. I don't want to be right on top of an obstacle before I hit it. This is what I consider fairly good lighting:

http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/f...chBgon/035.jpg

Deer, skunks, porcupines, lumber, rocks... yeah, I'd like to see that stuff with 5 seconds to spare at 20mph.

Do the same with a light that is putting out less than half of what a car does. What's that prove? I agree that there is a big difference between scatter and direct beam. The complaints about bicycle lights are be about scatter, not about the direct beam. Why else would the highly focused beam crowd use the old saw of '50% of light from conical beams is wasted'? Wasted where? To scatter...or so they think.

50 yards is totally useless unless you have a very bright light, most people do not have lights that even exceed 200 lumens.. My thrower is good enough for 100 yards if I needed it, but that would not be proper use of that light..

My closeup light is Elektrolumens EDC-MCe light and thrower is a custom 5x Alpha G8 LED.. Combined output is close to 1900 lumens.. Most of my rides I only use the Elektrolumens which is 700 OTF Lumens. On dark stretches I will turn on the thrower.. The pic below is the Elektrolumens EDC-Mce light beamshot.. The other pic shows the 5x Alpha G8 on the left and EDC-MCe on the right..

Youtube link below shows beamshot of 5x alpha light.

What is very nice is that the Thrower when aimed at 20 yards is 2/3 the width of a car lane and perfectly fills the entire bike lane for seeing debris down the road.. When you aim an MC-e or P7 light down the road is normally when I would get drivers flashing me with there lights because of all the side spill these lights produce..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHll1wa27qY