In the table aside you can see the Lumen and Lux values of these lights.Īs you can see the Strike 500 has 500 Lumen (output of the light source, remember?) and the Strike 300 has 300 Lumen. Below, we have two illustrations of both the Strike 300 and the Strike 500. It will help your understanding of these terms to see how it exactly works in real life. Now that we have explained the theory of the terms Lumen, candela, and Lux. Below, you will find a simplified calculation of how Lux exactly works: You will see in the specifications of our lights that the amount of Lux is given mostly on a one-meter distance. Lux completely depends on the distance at which it is measured. If the surface is ten meters away from the light source, the light appears less strong on the surface but probably on a much bigger area. You will see a massive bright light beam on the surface. You can imagine that this depends on how far the surface is from the light source.įor example if the surface is only 50 centimeters away from the light source. Lux is given in lumen per square meter of the surface that is lit. In other words how much of the original light that is emitted (Lumen) will actually reach a particular surface in front of the light. Lux is the illuminance of a surface perpendicular to the light source. Now that you have an understanding of both Lumen and Candela, this last term will make complete sense and you will see why Lux is probably the most important unit we discuss here. It gives you the most fundamental value of the strength of your light, not impacted by a lens, direction, or anything else. We do this because this is the amount of light emitted and thus important to determine the strength of a light source. We measure all our lights in Lumen, which you will find in the specifications of our lights. A blue light source with the same amount of watts will therefore have a higher amount of lumen than a red light with the same amount of watts, only because we perceive this light as more powerful. For example the human eye sees blue light as a more intense light than red. The intensity of the light source depends on how we perceive that light. This means that it takes the human eye into account to determine its value. So, Lumen is the total amount of light that is emitted from a light source. It tells you the intensity of the light source without giving you any information about the direction of that light. Lumen is a unit that expresses the amount of light that leaves the source. It can be converted one to one using 0.98 candela.Let's start with the simple one Lumen. In North America, the dated unit candlepower (cp) is still commonly used for luminous intensity. Lumen, candela, lux and watts are internationally standardized units known as SI units. 1 lx – that’s how it’s abbreviated – corresponds to one lumen per square meter. Things are easier with it than with candela. In this case lighting technicians talk about lux, the illuminance. What is important for drivers is how much light is thrown onto the road. Actually, LEDs would always need to be specified in candela since they don’t emit light in all directions. And one candela also roughly corresponds to the light a simple household candle produces. That’s the reason why a car headlight can turn 1500 lumen into several tens of thousands of candela.īy the way, that’s Latin for candle. The smaller the part, the more candela are produced from a light source. The unit abbreviated as cd can be explained as follows: when light is focused, it only comes out of one part of a sphere. This is where candela, the luminous intensity, comes in. In headlights, but also in household reflector lamps, the light is more or less focused though. But the problem with this physical unit abbreviated as lm is that it can only be used for light sources that emit light in all directions. The higher it is, the more light a light source produces. That takes us straight to the most important unit of measurement for light – the lumen. Intensity/luminous flux: this information says more than the power consumption in watts. A xenon lamp even gets 3000 lumen from 35 watts. The corresponding bulb, which is not sold in Europe anymore, needs as much as 100 watts for that. Conventional H7 halogen lamps produce a luminous flux of 1500 lumen from 55 watts. The comparison of the wattage of household lamps with that of car lamps is a false one though. That was at most the case with old household lamps (“light bulbs”). More watts does not necessarily mean more light. Is it not enough to know how many watts a lamp has? Many readers will probably wonder what these terms say about light. In our articles, but also on the packaging of lamps and their data sheets, you will often see the words lumen, candela and lux.
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