More Headlight Fun

[kurek]

Some weeks ago I took my Ram out to a local piece of public land where I could hover a drone and take night time photos of headlight beam patterns to attempt to put some objectivity into the conversation about lighting technology.

Frankly the lighting thing gets dumb, like oil and tire arguments where everyone has tied their ego to a certain brand and we're no longer talking facts just feelings.

So here's a quick photo I took from above my Ram with just the low beam headlights on, and at the same time a random car was driving by on the road. I don't think it's apples/apples exactly because that car was in motion but unless somebody wants to sponsor me to go recruit random people to park out in the snow with me this is what you get




Here is where it might get more interesting - although this isn't on a Ram I think it still is useful information.

My other car is a 2015 Jeep Patriot. I went to the same location (now muddy instead of snowy) and this time I brought the factory Sylvania headlight bulbs, a set of the same $23 incandescent bulbs that are in my Ram (Wagner ND) and a set of the most highly recommended, newest generation LEDs I could track down for my Jeep - specifically these are 2020 Hikari Megatron LEDs.

I know people wanna bicker on LEDs.. and bicker and bicker and bicker.. save it for Bingo night. I deliberately sought out the latest generation of the most recommended ones I could find for that vehicle, participating in forums like this one - cost no object - and then I pulled the trigger. I'm just some dude on the internet and I believe I did get the best possible drop-in LED assemblies for that application and if you disagree, well I can't stop you.

I set the camera on the drone to manual mode so it would not adjust exposure on its own, set it to hover at the maximum altitude I could fly there and let it just sit and hover while I swapped out 3 sets of lights. Thankfully swapping bulbs on the Jeep is way easier than on the Ram, this wouldn't have been possible on a single drone battery with the Ram!

Then I took the photos home and strictly adjusted the color down to black and white, to eliminate personal bias from the equation. No other color or brightness adjustments so it would purely reflect the differences in the lighting that the different bulbs produced.

So first here's all three bulbs, top row is high beams and second row is low beams.



Next here is an image where I have split the two better performing bulbs left/right, and mirrored the passenger side to the left. In other words, both halves of this image are of the passenger side but I flipped one of them to put next to the other, to eliminate the effect of the terrain ahead of the vehicle since the terrain is unequal.



I also selected a couple stripes from the overall beam pattern to call attention to specific differences in detail revealed by either bulb type. There is a small legend by each one with a green rectangle to identify where in the beam pattern those stripes were taken.



In addition to what you can see in the photos I have some subjective opinions on the experience but I'll keep those to myself so nobody gets their feelings hurt

 

[Brandon-w]

Nice job! You've done some good investigating.

Sent from my SM-G981W using Tapatalk

 

[misfit77]

As an engineer i appreciate the legit and accurate comparison.

I just got lost what was bulb a, b and sylvanias.

I understand you dont want to state an opinion and let the data do the talking, but I would like to see a brief conclusion of data.

Sadly projection photos and lumen measurements do not explain why our head lights suck. I am slightly sure my LED help with visibility, but not by much. I have had a 91 miata, 96 eclipse and 96 xj amongst others that were better with european halogen bulbs like Hella or Osram.

Good research.

 

[kurek]

I understand you dont want to state an opinion and let the data do the talking, but I would like to see a brief conclusion of data.

Thanks - well you saw why I didn't want to specifically say which bulb is which, people get weird about LEDs and I'm not trying to rile anyone up if they have decided to tie their personal ego to the brand of headlights in their truck.

We can all agree that there are better and worse products of every sort and nobody will admit that their own junk is the problem so hopefully we can steer clear of that.

Executive Summary:

• Both "upgrade" options much more similar than different.
• LED option costs more $ and bears some mechanical drawbacks.
• I have chosen to keep the Wagner ND bulbs in the vehicle.

So to be absolutely specific, the exact headlight bulbs are as follows:

Sylvania Basic H13 - these were not brand new at time of comparison and I believe they are probably the original equipment from the vehicle. This makes them potentially 5 years old with 105k miles. Visual inspection of the bulbs does not indicate contamination of the glass inner surface.

Wagner Night Defense 9008 - these were brand new at the time of comparison. This is a "Reduced Glare" specific bulb which has a prismatic coating on part of the bulb surface that appears to split some of the light to yellow and violet, which are directed at different parts of the road and this effect can be seen to some extent in the topmost, color photo of my Ram's headlight pattern.




Hikari 2020 Eye of Megatron H13 LED assemblies with 50w resistor harnesses for vehicle compatibility. These were also brand new at the time of comparison and adjusted for best pattern as directed by the instruction manual (this was easy and the results were obvious and unmistakable when correct). Noteworthy features are that they are equipped with remote phosphor structures instead of on-die phosphor and also an opaque, metal shield partially covering the low beam emitter arrays which I expect plays a central role in pattern control.



Headlight output is voltage regulated on this vehicle and unchanged from the factory setting of 13.2V (kinda cool to have this data). Vehicle is a 2015 Jeep Patriot which uses single bulb 9008/H13 reflector assemblies. Headlight assemblies are not sun damaged and aim has been adjusted to DOT standards.

Subjective interpretation of total light output from the birds-eye photos:

I think it is clear both the LED lamps and the Wagner ND lamps produce significantly more light in the entire volume of the beam's focal pattern both high and low beam filaments as compared with the presumed OEM bulbs.
This was also observed directly while onsite standing beside the driver side fender of the vehicle, walking around it, and sitting in the driver's seat looking forward. Both the LED and Wagner ND lamps appear to make very similar total volumes of light. Again onsite observations agree with photographic analysis.

Like total light output, observed lighting pattern among the two different technologies were more similar than different. Because of the difference in lamp color and because I didn't yet know what to look for (I had not yet seen the bird's eye photos on a large desktop screen) this was less obvious while onsite, but one lamp technology placed a little bit more light directly forward - "pencil beam" - while the other lamp technology placed a little bit more within the flanks of the reflector's focal pattern so on average both may have made nearly identical light with only very minor differences in distribution.

My opinion here is in terms of both total lighting output and observed pattern behavior the lamps are extremely comparable, much more similar than different.

This result surprised me as I expected the comparison to be a compromise between pattern control and absolute light output and that simply did not make itself apparent subjectively onsite or demonstrably in photos.

In other words, in my mind as of January 2021 it puts away the notions that all halogen bulbs make less light than LEDs or all LED drop-in bulbs are ****** glare cannons

Contributing factors are that the halogen bulbs here are $20-25/pr mid-level upgrade bulbs and the LED lamps were my sincere best effort of achieving a positive result.

Now that I've expanded on how similar they are we can get to the major differences:

1st is color. This is a topic that includes absolute opinion (you can like cool white more than warm white or vice/versa), it includes the inarguable laws of physics (short wavelengths interact with air and suspended water vapor differently from long wavelengths, and focus at different positions inside your eye), and some factors which may be dictated by organic chemistry (your retina may not be affected by different wavelengths exactly like mine, and somebody else, etc).

An observation I made: while the LED lamps were installed I could make out the red color of my Jeep while standing outside by the driver side fender. It didn't seem like I could quite make out the color of the Jeep by ambient light while either of the incandescent bulbs were installed. I don't know if this is attributable to more of the light reflecting off water vapor in the air or differences in pattern control or maybe something entirely unrelated like the position of clouds in the sky.

The LED lamps are stated by the manufacturer to be 6000k color temp. If anybody offered a latest generation, high quality LED lamp for this application that was closer to 4000k I would have bought that instead but this is what the market offers. The color of the Wagner ND is polychromatic by design so there's not a number we can point at. My observation of those lamps are that they tend to throw approximately concentric rings of very yellow (outside), fairly clean white closer to the center and a deep purple color roughly near the upper center of the beam pattern. This distribution is dictated by the prismatic coating on part of the lamp glass and by the reflector in which the lamp is installed.

I understand the fashion sensibility of blue-white LEDs, we all seem naturally drawn to the association of bleach white whether it's headlights, laundry, teeth, whatever.

So for pure vanity the LEDs are probably going to be a clear winner in this comparison.

2nd is cost. Well, I paid $23 for the pair of Wagner ND's and a little over $100 for the Hikari LEDs and the resistor harnesses.

3rd is longevity. I cannot predict the lifetime of either product but it should be noted that the LED assemblies have mechanical fans and while the diode emitter itself may be rated for tens of thousands of hours, the fan is a spinny moving part that lives in a really rough environment. I can make guesses about how that turns out over time but have no empirical data.

4th is power consumption. While the diode itself may not consume much power it was necessary to install 50 Watt resistors to make them work with this vehicle so the total power consumption is a wash and no rational argument separates this from the incandescent bulbs.

5th is noise. I can hear the LED fans from inside the cabin with the engine idling. It's not loud but compared to the halogens which make zero noise it's more than zero noise.

Sixth is installation hassle. The halogens have essentially none as they are a 1:1 replacement for OE. The LED lamps required an additional harness to prevent flickering and this harness adds an extra 18" of bulky cable plus an extra set of connectors plus extra resistors that I need to find a home for. And the resistors get extremely hot in operation - hot enough to melt plastic and much too hot for safe skin contact so it is necessary to mount them in a manner that avoids collateral damage. Presumably that work only has to be done once and not everyone cares about tidy wiring under the hood but this is worth mentioning.

Last I want to share my completely subjective driving experience with these lamps. I live in Washington state and on the evening I performed this exercise it was varying amounts of misty, foggy and drizzly outside. The drive from my house to the OHV area where I parked for this is around 15 miles and crosses suburban, rural, light agricultural, a large river/ravine and hilly/forested areas. I drove out to the site fully after sunset and spent less than 30 minutes total at the site before returning home. On the outbound drive I had the LED lamps installed and on the return drive I had the Wagner ND lamps installed. On completely clear stretches of road I found the visibility to be about comparable between the two. Both provided ample information about the road ahead and both showed an obvious cut-off line when I was close behind other vehicles at stoplights. It doesn't prove anything but incidentally I was not flashed by any oncoming drivers during this exercise.

In foggy & drizzly sections I feel that a big difference was observable. The LED lamps did not seem to reflect back as well from wet asphalt or wet vehicles and I wasn't able to see surface irregularities on the road as well. The LED lamps seemed to do a better job of lighting up the white reflective fog line and road center stripes when those were present but a worse job of identifying the asphalt both "at horizon" and along the edge of the road.

All right, that's a whole damn book. Make of it what you will.

 

[tron67j]

Awesome write up. I am looking to try some new bulbs in my Tradesman with the basic reflectors. I am not interested in the LEDs, I agree with moving parts over wheels of a truck = problems down the road (no pun intended). Sometimes I feel like someone strapped flashlights on the bumper, they couldn't do my better on the design? Thanks for the information!