Tint / CRI for riding

[Linger]

Please contribute your subjective impression on what light source is best for riding.

For me this separates into urban vs off-road. While my methodology could improve, I have done rough comparisons with the illumination tools at hand:
Incan
6v 2mil candlepower Canadian tire halogen search light, Uk Sunlight D4 halogen (dive) torch, Lumens Factory EO-6
LED
XPE Q2 4B, XPE Q3 5A, XRE R2 WF, MC-E (JE6 , unknown warm, WD), scc P7 (unknown cool blue, SVN), scc P4 SVO, K2 TFFC TVOD

For black-top / road cycling:
First preference is multi-die cool tint led's. These win out over incan for me. Even at lower power, multi-die cool tint led's seem to be more revealing of irregularities in paved surfaces (tar lines, pot holes, depressions in soft asphalt).
I have not yet set up a compraison group with 4x single emiters together, though I expect with their popularity a triple will be comperable to a multi-die.

For off-road:
(I prefer incan for anything natural source (dirt, trees, wood bridges, rocks) but I've only used incan for testing, as power consumption is just too high for regular use. For practicality...)
First choice is warm tint leds, which do a great job as well. Cool tints appear to florece white off many broad-leaf plants (a great way to spot weeds on a lawn is a mc-e WD at night, they appear almost white against the darker green grass), while warm tints show stronger against the trunks, branches, and earth and seem to provide more depth of field.

I have not yet set up my high-cri emitters for biking but I presume these will push warm tints to 3rd choice and make high-CRI emitters 2nd to incans. It will be interesting to see if the high-cri emiters also trump road cycling.

Best,
Linger

 

[jtr1962]

I agree on the cool tints for road cycling. They greatly increase contrast, and let you see things you can't under those awful sodium streetlights. I don't do off-road cycling so I can't comment there.

 

[BillyNoMates]

From my own experience, I would say that I dislike cool tint LEDs. Most of my riding is on-road but with large stretches on rural, single lane unlit roads. I've always found that the cool tint LEDs do not provide a good contrast for these roads in damp conditions. The roads I use do not have an obvious road-edge for a number of reasons: No kerbstones, broken up tarmac and pot-holes, encroaching mud/vegetation from the verges etc.

I've always founf that Cool tint LEDs seem to perform poorely illuminating brown mud and green vegetation, which is not surprising considering the typcial emission spectrum of a typical cool-tint LED. Dew-coverered grass does show up, but that just looks totaly wierd as I get a sort of optical illusion from shimmering effect - I find it impossible to determine any landscape details. I've also found the same holds for running in woods - cool tint LEDs just don't seem to cut it - they can be very bright to look at, but they just don't have the right spectrum for lighting up trees/mud/grass.

I've used neutral tint LEDs and found them to be better suited to my needs. The greens show up better with less shimmering on damp days. Mud shows up well too. I would like to try warm tint LEDs this winter to see how they compare.

 

[R@ndom]

Cool light doesn't cut through fog and rain as well.

 

[alister]

Over on www.mtbr.com in the DIY light forum, WH seems to be the tint of choice.