HID Color Temperature

[zerryxu]

Color temperature is a characteristic of visible light that has important applications in lighting, photography, videography, publishing, manufacturing, astrophysics, and other fields. The color temperature of a light source is the temperature of an ideal black-body radiator that radiates light of comparable hue to that light source. The temperature is conventionally stated in units of absolute temperature, kelvin (K). Color temperature is related to Planck's law and to Wien's displacement law.

Higher color temperatures (5,000 K or more) are cool (blueish white) colors; lower color temperatures (2,700¨C3,000 K) are warm (yellowish white through red) colors.http://www.vvme.com/hlimg/hid-color-temperatures.jpg

[Supa Dexta]

Thank you, I will take your information and neither click your link, nor buy your product.

[Tarrantula]

Very informative. Would read again.

[Boosted131]

Funny this is the link is where I got my last hid lights... Good quality actually

[Maxx Mazda]

Originally posted by Tarrantula
Very informative. Would read again.

Well played! :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[Kloubek]

Anyone who has researched installing those shit kits in their halogen housings already knows this info.

And please... for the love of god PLEASE can one of you companies actually show TRUE photos of the colour rather than photoshop-edited pseudo colour representations?

[revelations]

DO people actually buy green/pink HIDs ??

[Tarrantula]

Originally posted by revelations
DO people actually buy green/pink HIDs ??

Ive seen quite a few pinks in Calgary. Mostly on 328i BMW's, and a couple of X5's

[Boosted131]

Originally posted by Kloubek
Anyone who has researched installing those shit kits in their halogen housings already knows this info.

And please... for the love of god PLEASE can one of you companies actually show TRUE photos of the colour rather than photoshop-edited pseudo colour representations? True, I got the 8000 off them and it was a lot more blue than that

[GS430]

I'm colorblind, they all look the same. :dunno:

worst thread ever.

[slinkie]

Originally posted by revelations
DO people actually buy green/pink HIDs ??

I've seen the black CRX with green lights, because the beehive symphony didn't draw enough attention

And theres a last-gen accord coupe with pink ones. And yes, both were east of deerfoot...


For some reason I see a lot of new MB's and BMWs with one pink headlight, does that happen when it's about to burn out?

[Redlyne_mr2]

Originally posted by slinkie



For some reason I see a lot of new MB's and BMWs with one pink headlight, does that happen when it's about to burn out?

yup

[heavyD]

What's with you kids and your love for bright lights anyway? Kids at every car forum I go to whining about how stock HID's aren't bright enough.:rolleyes:

Also why you kids always replacing your fog lights with HID's rendering them useless outside of being an annoyance to the general population?

[Tarrantula]

Fog lights that use halogens are actually detrimental to the fog light ability. Having proper fog housings and HID's provides a clear cutoff and better light during fog.

[DeleriousZ]

I saw a jeep with purple headlights a few weeks ago. Not sure how they're able to drive around at night...

[heavyD]

Originally posted by Tarrantula
Fog lights that use halogens are actually detrimental to the fog light ability. Having proper fog housings and HID's provides a clear cutoff and better light during fog.

Except that fog repells the high intensity light of HID's combined with the nasty reflection of dark wet pavement due to the mounting location and position of the lights not being designed for high intensity light make them detrimental in the conditions fog lights were designed for. All codes for fog lights call for a specific low intensity light source.

[Twin_Cam_Turbo]

Originally posted by Redlyne_mr2


yup

Thats when you know your about to be $350 out of pocket for a HLPD bulb if your out of warranty :(

[Tarrantula]

Originally posted by heavyD
Retort

Proper fogs are yellow, and less intense than say.. 6000 or 5300K lights.

[heavyD]

Originally posted by Tarrantula


Proper fogs are yellow, and less intense than say.. 6000 or 5300K lights.

Actually Europe no longer calls for yellow fog light bulbs as scientists have determined that there was no advantage to yellow light in fog.


The article is by J. H. Nelson and is entitled "Optics of headlights". The penultimate section in this paper is on "fog lamps". Nelson notes that "there is almost complete agreement among designers of fog lamps, and this agreement is in most cases extended to the colour of the light to be used. Although there are still many lamps on the road using yellow light, it seems to be becoming recognized that there is no filter, which, when placed in front of a lamp, will improve the penetration power of that lamp."

[Disoblige]

I must admit though, this does look sweet. Two cut-offs!
Too bad the main headlight cut-off is not sharp at all. Imagine how sick it would look.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3399/3208326950_694bab93c6_o.jpg

[revelations]

Originally posted by DeleriousZ
I saw a jeep with purple headlights a few weeks ago. Not sure how they're able to drive around at night...

I've seen that too - I guess if you never leave the city limits its not a big deal.

[DeleriousZ]

Originally posted by heavyD


Actually Europe no longer calls for yellow fog light bulbs as scientists have determined that there was no advantage to yellow light in fog.



Penetration maybe not, but what about reflection/refraction?

[Mibz]

Originally posted by DeleriousZ
Penetration maybe not, but what about reflection/refraction? They're opposite sides of the same coin. Any light that penetrates fog isn't being scattered. Any light that's being scattered isn't penetrating.

[DeleriousZ]

Yeah but scattered yellow light is less distracting than scattered white light? Or something lol.

I find that bright white lights into fog is more blinding/distracting than a yellow light, could just be personal preference tho, especially in falling snow.

[Disoblige]

At night, I do find that yellow HIDs from fogs are less blinding than white/blu-ish.

[Mibz]

The theory is that because Rayleigh's law says that scattering tends to happen to a greater degree on short wavelengths (blue and violet in the visible spectrum, hence why the sky is blue), using longer wavelengths for fog lights (red and yellow) will allow better penetration. More "I can see through the fog" and less "Wow, I can see the fog so clearly now".

However, and I think I may word this incorrectly so somebody can feel free to correct me, Rayleigh's law only applies to things around the same scale or smaller as the wavelengths. Fog droplets are fucking huge compared to wavelengths in the visible spectrum so it really doesn't matter what colour of light we're shooting at them, they're gonna scatter/reflect a ton of it.

EDIT: As for them being "less blinding", there's two considerations there. One is that they're positioned much lower and you're WAY less likely to be hit by them directly. The other is that in order to get yellow light from halogens you need to apply a filter, which can significantly reduce overall light output. This applies far less to HIDs, with the difference between 4300K and 3000K output being, IMO, negligible. So yellow HIDs will blind you only slightly less than the white ones :P