£50 dimable (low beam) front lamp...
- Thread starter thelarkbox
- Start date
Didn't @soundwave have a Magicshine? I like the lens and even spread of light, I dislike the remote, price, app, and the non-replaceable battery... which looks too small to provide the brightness as despicted for 2 hours? It's pretty easy with manual control of a camera and editing, to make lights seem brighter than they are, plus human eyeballs and brains perceive differently to cameras. Does his body language suggest he didn't pay for that light? Reviewers with big followings are offered cash plus freebies for reviews.
After three years of fiddles I'm presently quite happy with my light ensamble, they resolve my problems and annoyances as a cyclist - potholes are clearly visible at night, my lights make me visible day and night, drivers now see me at junctions, vehicles don't pass close. Besides, I'm cheesed off about having to charge so much stuff before going out for a ride! 4 red flashers, red GPS tracker light, GoPro 7 Hero Black with extra batteries, a steady Planet X head/helmet light made red, 2 Aldi spoke lights, phone, power bank etc. etc.. but at least I don't have to worry about these two cheap "1800LM" and one "2400LM" on my handlebar, plus another "1800LM" made red flashing on the rear pannier rack, because they're soldered to my ebike battery.
Drivers used to flash their headlights at me when I only had one "1800LM" pointed horizontally, and driver friends said it was "blinding", but my three angled down aren't. These all have a "Dim" mode, which I never need to use. The rear "1800LM" made red is also angled down - despite that, I hope it distracts drivers from texting... and using social media, which makes them antisocial.
These lights are about £13 a pop, cheap to replace. I've repositioned the headlight on the right since this video, for a brighter more even spread. During the day, two are on constant mode and one flashing. The first part of the vid is on auto and brightened in post to show potholes, but I usually go manual and underexpose for night, to better record number plates.
After three years of fiddles I'm presently quite happy with my light ensamble, they resolve my problems and annoyances as a cyclist - potholes are clearly visible at night, my lights make me visible day and night, drivers now see me at junctions, vehicles don't pass close. Besides, I'm cheesed off about having to charge so much stuff before going out for a ride! 4 red flashers, red GPS tracker light, GoPro 7 Hero Black with extra batteries, a steady Planet X head/helmet light made red, 2 Aldi spoke lights, phone, power bank etc. etc.. but at least I don't have to worry about these two cheap "1800LM" and one "2400LM" on my handlebar, plus another "1800LM" made red flashing on the rear pannier rack, because they're soldered to my ebike battery.
Drivers used to flash their headlights at me when I only had one "1800LM" pointed horizontally, and driver friends said it was "blinding", but my three angled down aren't. These all have a "Dim" mode, which I never need to use. The rear "1800LM" made red is also angled down - despite that, I hope it distracts drivers from texting... and using social media, which makes them antisocial.
These lights are about £13 a pop, cheap to replace. I've repositioned the headlight on the right since this video, for a brighter more even spread. During the day, two are on constant mode and one flashing. The first part of the vid is on auto and brightened in post to show potholes, but I usually go manual and underexpose for night, to better record number plates.
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Fair enough .. The low beam did ring my bell but not sufficiently to buy one 
I dont think the utuber is a shill, a local lad and while its a different end of the cycling rd lightweight rd racing etc some fun vids there..
I dont think the utuber is a shill, a local lad and while its a different end of the cycling rd lightweight rd racing etc some fun vids there..
old magicshine light 8 leds 8000lm 6 18650 cells in a custom pack and bms i cant replace ,cant even find the fkn connector to try another pack or cut the cable.
prob get 25mph down the canal in pitch black it just dont throw the light far enough down the road.
batt lasts about 1hr at full beans but are decent panasonic cells that you will have to Dremel the casing apart to get to them and the bms.
You're doing quite well, but still a bit of catching up. This is my commuter bike from 2012. That's 12 years ago!
That's before I was born!
I bet that lot lit the scene really well. Did you start with the smallest light, then the one slightly larger etc. etc. directly proportional to your rising fury at drivers, pedestrians, and the blasted from space by Project Thor state of our roads? Even if I needed more light, and much as I'd like to, I don't think it'd be wise to install any more on my bike... their power consumption is no longer insignificant - I use them to run down my battery for storage, and besides, my bike needs to retain it's folding capability. I'll simply have to wait for brighter LEDs of the same size to become more efficient.
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Or you could just buy a single quality light and not look like you're compensating for something else
Exposure 6 pack
Some of my bike rides are 6 hours or so in darkest inky night surrounded by hostiles of all sorts... a mere 2 hours at highest brightness isn't long enough for me, I get great illumination of the road for much longer than that, from my lights powered by my ebike's 19.2Ah/690Wh battery.
Because I don't have to worry about battery life, my lights also make my bike highly visible during the day - you can just about see a slightly brighter area on the road in this framegrab. Be seen, be safe.
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That's why I use three beamed lights - the middle light throws light a little further ahead, for higher speed night riding. You can see two spots on the road here, the third light is flashing at "1800LM".
No, I woke up one day and got the idea to go for the blitz. I tried to get some photos, but the camera always adjusted the light in the photo, so no matter how bright, it always loos the same. The worst thing was my mate, who used to ride in front wearing a high vis jacket: It completely dazzled me, like a car that hadn't dipped its headlights.
Automatic modes on cameras aren't designed to photograph bright headlights at night, and human eyes see higher dynamic range... so no photo will look exactly as you see or remember (currently), then there's our complicating inbuilt A.I. factor (it's all artificial ) doing continuous post processing, even after memory storage. I'm sure you know that a lot of cameras including those of cellphones have manual controls, so you can select shutter speed and ISO at the very least, to snap an approximation of the bright scene you're looking at - here's an old long exposure (ISO 100, long shutter speed) using my cheap OnePlus 5 phone's camera, with my bike only illuminated by a full moon on top of a hill, with the phone propped up by a can of coke for 30 seconds, after I'd drunk the coke with a kebab one summer night. Slow moving clouds, city lights are in the background. I could see my house from there.
I keep meaning to venture out specifically to take photos of my bike, headlights etc. might do at some point with a DSLR.
) doing continuous post processing, even after memory storage. I'm sure you know that a lot of cameras including those of cellphones have manual controls, so you can select shutter speed and ISO at the very least, to snap an approximation of the bright scene you're looking at - here's an old long exposure (ISO 100, long shutter speed) using my cheap OnePlus 5 phone's camera, with my bike only illuminated by a full moon on top of a hill, with the phone propped up by a can of coke for 30 seconds, after I'd drunk the coke with a kebab one summer night. Slow moving clouds, city lights are in the background. I could see my house from there.I keep meaning to venture out specifically to take photos of my bike, headlights etc. might do at some point with a DSLR.
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Someone here will know this for sure.
But I seem to remember coming across a front lamp that had a little lever/switch on top that flipped from full beam to dipped beam, much the same as you have on car headlights. Only cant remember anything other than that.
But I seem to remember coming across a front lamp that had a little lever/switch on top that flipped from full beam to dipped beam, much the same as you have on car headlights. Only cant remember anything other than that.
All three of my lights have a dimmer mode, which you can switch to, by switching them off and on... but if you switch them off an on again, you get the discombobulating, nauseating to view and terrifying flashing mode at high brightness, and all three flash at different rates. Off and on again to get back to full beam.
BTW Your Fuji compact camera is capable of taking great photos (use a tripod, low ISO, and long exposure, avoid using flash), nearly all those old Fuji compacts had a good range of manual controls. I've still got one somewhere. I've always preferred CCD sensored camera colours, because they made an effort to make them look like film. But they're crap in low light (without long exposure).
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Did some incident trigger installing those Mad Max-usque lights? The final straw for me was a car at a T junction one night about 10.30pm - I assumed he'd seen me, because he stopped at the T junction to my left as I approached... but when I was directly in front of his car, the car suddenly accelerated at me, and the big fat driver immediately shouted "****!!!!" and slammed on the brakes. I'd rather not be be flattened, nothing like that has happened since I installed these lights.
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