Silverstar 9006XS/ST lowbeams vs standard Halogens

It is the gas used in the bulb plus the coating on the bulb that produces a whiter light with the same lumens as a halogen which produces a yellowish light.

HarryS

Light has a temperature in addition to a luminance level. Some lights are warmer or colder than another. This not temperature in the tactile "hold/cold" sense. Some colder lights can appear to cast a light that more brightly illuminates a subject. They do so at the sacrifice of color accuracy or fidelity. As in, florescent lights are colder and make it somewhat clearer to 'see' than incandescent. But the color balance suffers because of it. I'd imagine the headlights are doing similar things.

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Hmmm. Some confusion there.

Halogen is a gas used to charge the envelope of tungsten lamps. The gas is there to encourage tungsten that has boiled off the filament to redeposit itself on the filament when it cools, rather than on the wall of the envelope. Apart from discouraging discoloration of the glass and allowing somewhat higher operating temperatures it plays no major part in light color in incandescent lights.

"Whiter" isn't necessarily brighter, and likely isn't all that "whiter" either, more likely a shift towards blue. One way to achieve a shift towards blue is to make the filament burn hotter, the other way is to filter out yellow light. Filtering out yellow means that you lost lumens that your eye can use at night.

The Sylvania 9006XS listed below consumes 55 watts and produces 1000 lumens with a color temperature of about 4000 degrees Kelvin. If you're swapping lamps what you really want to know is watts consumed (load on your wiring) and lumens of output (bang for your buck). The color temperature just tells you how yellow or blue the light is and once your eye adjusts to the color you won't notice it.

For comparison, the color temperature of a match flame is about 1900 degrees Kelvin (1900K), a household light bulb is 3200K, late afternoon sunlight is about 4500K, a blue glass photoflood bulb is 4800K, an overcast sky is 7000K and light coming from only blue sky is 10,000 to

On Fri, 26 Nov 2004, it was written:

Fluorescents aren't always "colder" though -- think "warm white" lamps. I can get flos well-balanced with color temps from 2900K through 4600K, but they're expensive (it is the balanced spectrum that makes them expensive).

The real problem with standard flos is that they generally have a wicked green spike in their output. It does lovely things to skin tones.

I think that what they're doing with the headlights is tossing out technical terms that don't really have much meaning in the ordinary world and using them as a selling point. Given enough lumens and a good reflector design we could all be driving with those "brown-orange" sodium vapor lights for headlights and our eyes wouldn't really care.

Yes, but in the short of it it is the gas in the bulb other wise why the many flavors of gas?

HarryS

Using different gasses is a selling point. Xenon or krypton do pretty much what halogen does in an incandescent light -- lets you run the filament hotter and extends lamp life. HID lights are enclosed arc lights, and there xenon is used to help the lamp restrike immediately when hot (many types of enclosed arc lamps won't restrike hot and must cool several minutes, not a good thing with headlights).

Xenon is also a buzzword and using in a tungsten light helps make unwary buyers think that they're getting something much more snazzy than they are. It is still just a glowing bit of wire in a glass bubble.

Bottom line: If you can see a blue filter in the lamp, you're filtering out yellow light. Light that is filtered out is light your eye never gets to use.

On Fri, 26 Nov 2004, it was written:

out of interest, how do you get a colour temperature of a match flame at 1900K when wood burns at less than 500K ?

Dave Milne, Scotland '91 Grand Wagoneer, '99 TJ

Good question. I dunno. I'm a lighting guy, not a combustion guy and I do my best to not let people light with firewood in favor of a nice, controlled tungsten light, a flicker box and some colored gels. My SWAG would be that it has to do with thermal mass, the unburned firewood holding the temperature down, but that's just a SWAG.

The match, like wood, gives off combustible gases when heated above some mumble mumble [451 F] degrees. However that doesn't mean that the match flame is 1900 Kelvin, it just means it is roughly the same color as a blackbody radiator heated to 1900 K.

Dave Milne proclaimed:

Gotcha.

Dave Milne, Scotland '91 Grand Wagoneer, '99 TJ