# Is 200 lumens enough light for trail riding?



## r32657 (Jun 23, 2007)

I was looking at something like the Cree P4, but wasn't sure if that's something that would be good enough to see by itself.

http://cgi.ebay.com/New-200-Lumens-...0194402QQcmdZViewItem?_trksid=p3286.m20.l1116


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## yetibetty (Dec 24, 2007)

Not enless you have very good eyes.

400 lumems minimum for safe trail riding.


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## r32657 (Jun 23, 2007)

Maybe get a couple of these?


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## yetibetty (Dec 24, 2007)

If you want to go down the torch route then you should have a look at http://www.dealextreme.com/products.dx/category.940


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## r32657 (Jun 23, 2007)

I was looking at those, since they are at the right price point. Thanks for the link!


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## mx_599 (Dec 10, 2005)

i think it is enough. you will be a little limited but still enough to have fun. i am speaking from personal experience.

i have multiple DiNotte lights. each is 200. i have used the single 200 lumens in the past.

mx


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## antonio (Jan 18, 2005)

yetibetty said:


> If you want to go down the torch route then you should have a look at http://www.dealextreme.com/products.dx/category.940


I'm interested in sending this link to a few friends considering night-riding.

How could these be mounted to a handlebar? Helmet?

Thanks!

Ant


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## Boyonabyke (Sep 5, 2007)

r32657 said:


> I was looking at something like the Cree P4, but wasn't sure if that's something that would be good enough to see by itself.
> 
> http://cgi.ebay.com/New-200-Lumens-...0194402QQcmdZViewItem?_trksid=p3286.m20.l1116


It's enough for climbing fire roads, but I'd look at a newer Q5 or R2 bin light emitter and run at least 2 of those lights for single track, one on the bars with some spill light, one on the helmet to see further out..

For the helmet.. http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.13095

For the bars... http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.15335

Batteries, buy 2 sets of 2 for 4 batteries. http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.5790

Charger http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.1251

Big kahuna MCE LIGHT if you want one light to do it all. http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.12060

Flashlight mounts http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.792 or this http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.15342

It's all there on Deal Extreme, shipping charges are included, but the wait in time is worth it for the savings and free shipping.

.


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## mx_599 (Dec 10, 2005)

antonio said:


> I'm interested in sending this link to a few friends considering night-riding.
> 
> How could these be mounted to a handlebar? Helmet?
> 
> ...












https://www.universalcycles.com/shopping/product_details.php?id=23564&category=1612

mx


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## Jim Z in VT (Sep 9, 2007)

Check out this thread

I did a ride with just this 200 lumen light on my helmet the other night (forgot to recharge the battery on my handlebar light  ) It was fine. (twisty singletrack that I know well, moderate speeds). But I prefer to have both a bar and helmet light. 2 of these lights would be a great setup for ~$60 investment.

Depending on the helmet, a fat rubber band or a piece of of inner tube works. Same on the bars. But I just got a new helmet with the vents in a different pattern. Now I'm using a velcro strap with a piece of 1/2" closed-cell foam sandwiched between light and helmet for a snug fit. I'd attach a photo, but my camera has died.

DealExtreme also sells a simple handlebar mount for 2 or 3 dollars.

JZ


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## mechBgon (Jan 28, 2007)

antonio said:


> I'm interested in sending this link to a few friends considering night-riding.
> 
> How could these be mounted to a handlebar? Helmet?
> 
> ...


Helmet mounting can be done using O-rings through the helmet vents and around the flashlight.










Bike mounting is commonly done with a TwoFish LockBlock (I suggest the beefier CyclopBlock for mid-sized lights). I think DX carries a clone of the TwoFish lockblock. LightHound has the CyclopBlock.


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## Cat-man-do (May 16, 2004)

> * r32657 wrote:* I was looking at something like the Cree P4, but wasn't sure if that's something that would be good enough to see by itself.
> 
> http://cgi.ebay.com/New-200-Lumens-C...3286.m20.l1116


The subject here seems to be riding with minimal light. You didn't mention where you planned riding with this light. For doing doing road or light trail riding where you can limit your speed you should be fine. The torch you linked to will probably have more of a spot beam pattern. I own a similar P-4 torch. I use mine for emergency repairs or as an emergency get-outta-the-woods light. I like the idea that the torch (your link) has the external battery case for longer run time. If the torch has a wider beam that would be better. If you buy this I would surely recommend one of the D/X torches as well ( combo ) to use helmet mounted so you have a better/safer system. The recommendations given by the others were good ones.


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## r32657 (Jun 23, 2007)

It's going to be deep woods single track riding. Thanks for the picts and ideas! Please post up more picts on the helmet mounts for these things.


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## mechBgon (Jan 28, 2007)

Here's the TwoFish BikeBlock, which as you can see is designed with the two cutouts parallel to eachother, not 90° like the CyclopBlock or LockBlock. DX also has a generic variant of this design.


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## rkj__ (Feb 29, 2004)

With only 200 lumens, it is still going to be pretty dark in the woods. If you had to, you could get by, as long as you don't plan on being too aggressive/fast, and your trails are not too tricky, and your eyes are not too bad and....

So yes, for certain people riding certain trails in a certain manor it will work. But, many riders will want or require something more for what they have planned.


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## Jim Z in VT (Sep 9, 2007)

mechBgon said:


> Here's the TwoFish BikeBlock


That's exactly how I'm doing it, but with a home-brewed version.

JZ


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## Jim Z in VT (Sep 9, 2007)

rkj__ said:


> With only 200 lumens, it is still going to be pretty dark in the woods.


I think 200 lumens is fine, until you experience more. I was fine the other night with just the 200 lumen TR-801 on my head. But I just got back from my first ride with my new 14.4v battery (fully charged this time :thumbsup: ) over-volting my 32w halogen light. I don't know what the lumen output of that would be (I read it here someplace a while back) but it's way brighter than the TR-801, and I was riding faster. Even so, when I shut down the halogens and rode with the 200 lumen torch for a while, it seemed dim at first, but after a few minutes it seemed fine again. I think you just naturally adjust your speed so you're not outrunning your lights. And I don't think you have to ride fast to have an exciting ride at night! :eekster:

I still say the 200 lumen flashlight is a great (and economical) place to start. You can always add more light.

JZ


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## r32657 (Jun 23, 2007)

mechBgon said:


> Here's the TwoFish BikeBlock, which as you can see is designed with the two cutouts parallel to eachother, not 90° like the CyclopBlock or LockBlock. DX also has a generic variant of this design.


I think I'll just go with the MTE SSC P7 900-Lumen. How secure is that setup for single track with a lot of bumps etc?


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## troutie-mtb (Sep 20, 2007)

No 200 lumens is not enough

you need a minium of this


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## mechBgon (Jan 28, 2007)

r32657 said:


> I think I'll just go with the MTE SSC P7 900-Lumen. How secure is that setup for single track with a lot of bumps etc?


It's very secure. However, if your helmet fits loosely, adding 200-300 grams to the top of it may give it a mind of its own.


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## sevencycle (Jun 25, 2008)

200 lumens and training wheels will get you to the end of the driveway


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## msxtr (Dec 10, 2006)

troutie-mtb said:


> No 200 lumens is not enough
> 
> you need a minium of this


Hahahahaha, but what brute!!!!! 

Greetings - Saludos

msxtr


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## Cat-man-do (May 16, 2004)

sevencycle said:


> 200 lumens and training wheels will get you to the end of the driveway


:nono: ...just remember..it wasn't too long ago that most of us were still using 10 watt halogens. Three years ago I had 12 watt halogen on bars and 10 watt halogen on helmet ( over volted ) and thought I was Jack S***.. . I rode just as hard back then as I do now with my newer 1500lm LED set-up. Yes, I can see a whole lot better now but I'm still amazed when I turn my lights on low how well I can see...once my eyes adjust. A little more than a year ago I was using dual Dinotte 200L's ( helmet/bars ). If I'm honest about it I have to admit that it was enough light for almost any situation save the most aggressive / technical down hill where your speed is over 25mph. Yes, 200lm is pushing it a bit but a dual 200lm should be fine for most stuff.
To *r32657*: Mounting a torch to the helmet doesn't work for everyone although it is the cheapest way to go. Sometimes the vent holes in the helmet don't line up right which makes it difficult to mount. If you could afford it I would recommend a Dinotte 200L for the helmet to compliment the bar lamp. The mounting system for the 200L should work for almost any helmet.


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## Ral83178 (Sep 25, 2007)

*Good Lord!!!*



> troutie-mtb No 200 lumens is not enough
> 
> you need a minium of this


What light is this that you have? Helmet or bar set up?


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## troutie-mtb (Sep 20, 2007)

Ral83178 said:


> What light is this that you have? Helmet or bar set up?


Ha Ha yes bright is nt it 
It was from a diy mbeamshot thread I started a while back 
here http://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?t=459075


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## 02Slayer (Mar 5, 2004)

*Not sure I totally agree with you on that*



Cat-man-do said:


> :nono: ...just remember..it wasn't too long ago that most of us were still using 10 watt halogens. Three years ago I had 12 watt halogen on bars and 10 watt halogen on helmet ( over volted ) and thought I was Jack S***.. . I rode just as hard back then as I do now with my newer 1500lm LED set-up. Yes, I can see a whole lot better now but I'm still amazed when I turn my lights on low how well I can see...once my eyes adjust. A little more than a year ago I was using dual Dinotte 200L's ( helmet/bars ). If I'm honest about it I have to admit that it was enough light for almost any situation save the most aggressive / technical down hill where your speed is over 25mph. Yes, 200lm is pushing it a bit but a dual 200lm should be fine for most stuff.


After going from a similar halogen set up (5 W bars, 15 head) to HID head and triple SSC on the bars (1A) I am riding lines I simply wouldn't have tried back then. Yes, I rode as hard as I could with the halogens, but now, I friggin ride it all, and laugh. 
I do agree with you on the 200 lm thing, I ride with guys with the single minewt (man, that thing is small) on their helmet and they ride _most_ of the terrain fine. There are the occaisional move they elect to skip until the next daytime ride. But if you're wanting to really get out and blast, I feel more is safer and probably smarter. 
This pertains to my typical rocky, 100-200 ft up/down/up/down grinding highly technical rides. If you are hitting the pretty flat stuff where you don't need to see too far ahead, 200 lm is probably OK.
Just my opinion.


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## r32657 (Jun 23, 2007)

Got this in and it rocks! I'm thinking about getting another one for the bar.

Big kahuna MCE LIGHT l. http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.12060


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## MaximusHQ (Aug 6, 2007)

You could ride with 200lm on the trail, but you aren't going to see everything that you would if you used a decent amount of light. I wouldn't mess around when it comes to trail riding b/c it could be a safety hazard and then you wish you spent a couple more bucks for some more light. If you can at least get a couple 200lm lights with one for the helmet and one for the bars that would make a world of difference over just the one 200lm light.


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## Cat-man-do (May 16, 2004)

MaximusHQ said:


> You could ride with 200lm on the trail, but you aren't going to see everything that you would if you used a decent amount of light. I wouldn't mess around when it comes to trail riding b/c it could be a safety hazard and then you wish you spent a couple more bucks for some more light. If you can at least get a couple 200lm lights with one for the helmet and one for the bars that would make a world of difference over just the one 200lm light.


Yep, I think we all agree more is better. You can ride with 200lm but you have to limit your speed on the rough sections and be more attentive. On occasion I've had to get out of the woods with just a small torch...not as fun, but it can be done. If I was going to suggest a minimal light set-up for a noob it would probably be 200lm (flood) bar mounted and 200lm ( intermediate beam ) helmet mounted. For a noob it is more important for them to see what's right in front of them than what's way down the trail ( *being a noob they should be riding slower anyway ). With this set-up they have about 400lm right in front of them when they look down with the helmet. Up to the 75ft range they should be fine as long as they don't ride too fast. Once their skill level improves or they start getting brave they will need brighter lights.


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## kdiddy (Jul 14, 2005)

One thing I've noticed with running really bright lights is that where your lights aren't pointing is extremely dark. I mistakenly left my TriNewt at home for a ride and just had a 12W halogen on my helmet and I was able to get by pretty well. Your eyes do adjust to the amount of light that you have. I was riding tight single track. If I was on high-speed fire roads, it would have been a different story.


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## Iridethedirt (Jan 20, 2008)

I recently made a setup for my bike using a couple cree powered LED flashlights, a rigged up mount, which is not finalized, and a cree based headlamp, total lumen output is a touch over 300. 
I can't go as fast as i can in daylight, and picking a line on technical downhills is a bit trickier, however, i feel like its enough to ride at night. sure, having 1500 lm would be awesome, but for now, this will work ok.


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## Bikinfoolferlife (Feb 3, 2004)

I recently decided to reenter the world of lights for these short days and to give the trails a new look. I considered DIY but chickened out for a few reasons, but can always do that later. I did decide on a Minewt x.2, hopefully it was a decent choice, think I found a decent deal in any case. I will use it as a bar mount by itself, figure mostly on low. I used to ride many years ago with a NightSun with just the 7.5w going, hitting the high beam 20w only occasionally anyways (or even lights off altogether). I have no idea how that translates into lumens, though. 200 lumens seems quite fine from what I've seen, although the only personal demo was Francois fooling around with some Dinottes at the end of a Skeggs ride. Figure unless you've got a bunch of overvolted/HID/LED crazy fiends riding with you, where you need to worry about their shadow casting, then no worries. 

I figure the MiNewt with 92 low/150 high lumens will be in the same neighborhood as the NightSun, but that's a guess; also figure the Minewt will be bluer and a probably a bit less bright but for the weight/runtime/cost/convenience seems like a good way to go. I really don't even have a feel for the number of lumens whatsoever. Back when I got the NightSuns there just wasn't a standard of comparison. Since there wasn't anything close in performance at all, putting numbers other than worrying about battery draw didn't make a lot of sense. 

I still have the Nightsuns but the light/battery mounts aren't too friendly to my current Heckler setup what with VRO bars and no desire to run a bottom of the down tube bottle cage. It'd cost about the same to get a new battery/charger as buying the X2, so figured why bother). 

Anyone do a DIY LED conversion of the NightSuns by any chance? Team Issues I believe they were called. I searched but didn't find anything.


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## Jim Z in VT (Sep 9, 2007)

Bikinfoolferlife said:


> I figure the MiNewt with 92 low/150 high lumens will be in the same neighborhood as the NightSun, but that's a guess


The conversion I've seen mentioned here is 15 - 20 lumens / watt for halogen, so yeah, you should be in the same range (I'm assuming the NightSun used an MR11 halogen bulb....I don't know that light specifically).



> Anyone do a DIY LED conversion of the NightSuns by any chance?


Cutter sells an LED conversion kit in the MR11 size. It's a little pricey though, and doubly so if you swap both bulbs of your NightSun.

JZ


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## Boyonabyke (Sep 5, 2007)

r32657 said:


> Got this in and it rocks! I'm thinking about getting another one for the bar.
> 
> Big kahuna MCE LIGHT l. http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.12060


So that 12060 is a Big Kahuna as far as throwing a wall of light for a mountain bike light, eh? :thumbsup: I'm satisfied I picked one of those up along with a couple of Trustfire 801's. Each light serves it's own purpose, whoever paired these two together deserves kudo's for such a successful combination of flashlights gone wild for mountainbiking purposes at night.


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## Bikinfoolferlife (Feb 3, 2004)

JimZinVT said:


> The conversion I've seen mentioned here is 15 - 20 lumens / watt for halogen, so yeah, you should be in the same range (I'm assuming the NightSun used an MR11 halogen bulb....I don't know that light specifically).
> 
> Cutter sells an LED conversion kit in the MR11 size. It's a little pricey though, and doubly so if you swap both bulbs of your NightSun.
> 
> JZ


Thanks for the tip on the MR11 kit, but without digging out the old lights, thinking they're MR16s...guess I'll have to go dig 'em out and see.


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## NeoMoses (Sep 2, 2008)

Yes, 200 lumens should be plenty to enjoy a night ride. When I started night riding, I had around 60 lumens total lighting. I have since upgraded a bit, but I run less than 200 lumens 99% of the time. My favorite combo is a floody light mounted to the bars and a tighter spotlight mounted on my helmet. 

One thing I highly recommend is 2 lights at all times when riding singletrack at night. Why? Inevitably you will lose one light at some time. When you lose light # 1, light #2 gives you enough light to safely stop and go find light #1. Nothing is worse than riding at night with only a helmet mount, then having a tree rip off your light. Trust me, it sucks, and you'll end up walking your bike back to the trailhead by moonlight.

My overall recommendation: Get 2 flashlights from DealExtreme. I like the 18650 lights for the exceptional battery life, but some of the CR123 lights make very compact helmet mount lights. You should be able to get a very good setup for about $50-$75 from them.


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## zDAP (Nov 5, 2007)

>> The conversion I've seen mentioned here is 15 - 20 lumens / watt for halogen

That may be true, but I just switched to a Minewt X2 (single head) to replace an older NiteRider dual classic (12W / 20W / 32W halogen). The X2 on high (150 lumens) *seems* easily as bright, perhaps even moreso, as the halogens on high (32W) ... that puts halogens at (150/32 = 5) just 5 lumens / watt for me.

Running about 800 lumens total between partner and I now -- all that light is great for the trail, but unfortunately it also turns nice moonlit hillsides into pitch black! Now I'm starting to wonder if maybe FEWER lumens (and letting my eyes un-bleach from the LED's) might not be better?


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## Jim Z in VT (Sep 9, 2007)

This chart came up in the "DIY Light- 1 year on" thread yeasterday.....it indicates that at 12volts MR11 bulbs put out ~20 lumens per watt, and MR16s put out ~40 lumens / watt, and overvolting to 14.4v gives a big jump: http://nordicgroup.us/s78/wattslumens.html If it's a 6v system, it's going to be dimmer.

FWIW, I run 32 watts of MR11 halogen on my bars, and a 200 lumen Q5 led torch on my head. On low (12w) the led and the halogen seem similar in brightness. On high (32w) the halogen beam completely washes out the led beam. But when I hit the overvolt button (14.4v), even the 12w halogen beam washes out the led.

I agree with you that you can have too much light (donning my nomex anti-flame suit now rft: ) I don't run at full brightness except in really technical sections or faster downhill sections.

To each his own I guess....It's all fun!

JZ


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## MaximusHQ (Aug 6, 2007)

There is something to be said for using lower lumens and letting your eyes adjust. However, using lower lumens also leaves you open to miss certain details in the trail. The plus side of all the new LED lights is that most of them have good dimming options. You can run full power when needed like in technical areas or faster downhill areas like JimZinVT mentioned and then dim them down if you don't need the full power. The type of trails you are riding on makes a big difference when choosing a light. My good friend went out with me the other day on the trails I usually ride and he thought I they were way to technical for him and ended up walking the bike over a lot of what I ride over. At the same time I have seen some videos of people riding on trails that make mine look like a walk in the park so it really is hard to say that one amount of light is good for everyone. I will say that it is better to have too much light and then dim down the light then to have not enough and be sorry.


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## gticlay (Dec 13, 2007)

I just wanted to mention that I've ridden with 110 lumens. You can do it no problem... technical stuff is fine. The key is how fast can you ride with 110 vs. 500? I can BOMB down trails with 500, I can 'night ride' with 110.


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## rkj__ (Feb 29, 2004)

When night riding with low amounts of lumens (especially in a flood beam) your night vision really comes into play a lot more.


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