Exposure Lights - Cycling

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DumfriesDik

Senior member
 SW Scotland
I have seen that the Exposure Strada Mk5 has a remote switch. It is the switch that appeals, but does anyone have experience of the beams? Is the high beam in the same place but brighter or is it angled slightly upwards to light the lanes up better than the dipped beam?

Or does anyone know of a front light that has a remote switch? I wouldn't mind if I could just turn the light off and on with a switch as I have a secondary light.

I currently use a German light - Trelock LS 950. It is a great light, but its on its last legs now. However, I find with my winter gloves on its not so easy to do the buttons.
 
I've had a lupine Edison 5 for years and still going strong. Hi/low beam and on/off with remote handlebar switch. One button does everything - easy with gloves.

I paid £600+ when new. Saw one on ebay recently for £50!!!! If it worked fine, it's the deal of the century.

It's a german light too and the build quality is amazing. 8)
 
My Strada lowers the intensity of the wide LED much more than the focused LED when in low mode. The beam patterns are more offensive than proper german road legal stuff without giving any better road illumination. All honesty though, I'd not buy from Exposure again. It's not their products, it's their support, when you actually can talk to someone they're A++ & act quickly but it took me about 6 weeks to get to talk to someone about the issue with my Strada.
 
My head is spinning with cycle lights now! Usually I am able to whittle it down and make a choice when buying something, but cycle lights have me stumped, to coin a phrase.
 
What sort of riding are you doing? Road, (bridle|toe)path, off-road/mountain biking? And what sort of bike?
 
Its country lanes - single carriageways mainly. But would like to be able to dip the lights should a car come towards me. I think I might have pm'd you!
 
We run the tri t6 emiter Chinese light from ebay.
using the quad 18650 battery packs for night time trail riding where you need bright light.
About 300 lumens per lamp,one on bars and one on the hat. usually use two to three packs on a two hours ride when on full power.
lamps with charger and batter pack ,charger are £23 and spare battery packs £10
 
DumfriesDik, to certain extent i dont mind a bit of dazzle from a cyclist light. esp ones that flash. they are no more annoying than some of the lights on cars or people who insist on using fog lights cos they think it makes them look good...

for me the SINGLE best thing a cyclist can do at this time of year is have lights that are bright and easily noticed. this is even more so for the rear than the front.

those shitty little 3 led wast-of-space things that seemed to be used a lot should be banned. you cant see them from a distance. especially when they are mounted on the seat post and a coat goes over them or on a back pack and point upwards.

i see more people now with bigger brighter led units or several units and i just want to wind down my window and shout well done at them but it would only come across as abuse rather than praise.
 
Depends on your eyes, mine are very light sensitive so overly intense badly aimed bike lights effectively give me near 0 visibility for several min after passing. A single LED 200 lumen light is far worse than car headlights on main beam as though the car light is brighter it's over a larger area & causes my pupil to contact giving me a few seconds of reduced visibility. A bike light simply leaves a huge green after image on my eyes where the light tracked for several min which means I can't see a thing in those areas even if I put my main beams on!

The problem with the 3 LED ones is that actually they're bright enough to be seen IF you use batteries which are reasonably fresh (eg. used to ~75% capacity) once you get bellow that the wattage output drops off significantly. Further to this the way that LEDs work means that current is proportional to voltage, this means the fresh battery stage is a lot shorter than the used battery stage when they're woefully bad.
:headbang:

For this reason I use a light system which can take a variable input voltage much higher than the nominal LED voltage & drops it down to the required LED voltage. Result is 100% illumination until battery discharge & also absolutely epic run times. Eg. a 5000mAh 14.8v RC car battery can power a 8w of front light, 2.5w of rear light over a large surface area for 7 hours at full brightness.
 
The German cycle light law is very different to ours. They will not allow the bulb to be seen directly, it has to be bounced off a reflector which in turn has to be engineered to make a pattern and cuts off the top edge to minimise the glare to motorists.

I think the problem with front cycle lights is that the ultra bright ones designed for off roading are being used more and more with road cyclists. I agree they really do burn your eyes out.

My rear light is a Moon Shield 60. It pumps out up to 60 lumens and it can be very bright. Handy when it is foggy as it is now!
 
yes i wouldn't use my cheap Chinese light for road use i just use a led torch for that.
But off road there's nothing like two lights one on hat and one on bars giving much light on off road trails with no other illumination.
 
DumfriesDik said:
I think the problem with front cycle lights is that the ultra bright ones designed for off roading are being used more and more with road cyclists. I agree they really do burn your eyes out.
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We basically don't get see-by lights which are designed for road use in the UK. Things like the Exposure Strada are pale imitations of German standard see-by lights. I go for the multi-B+M option because with 7.2w of LED lights I've got over 15w worth of road illumination from mountain bike lights & in no way problematic for other road users.

My stage 2 front light project is based around a type approved LED motorbike headlight assembly... ironically this will leave me without a road legal front light :rofl:
 
The new B+M light is very different. It has a traditional seashell beam pattern. Its not the perfect light, but used with the Trelock LS950 its the perfect combination. The B+M for the wide and near with the 950 set a bit higher than you should for the distance stuff. The 950's beam pattern is very much a tight rectangle on your side of the carriageway so when it points up a bit the whole lane is lit up.

If only there was a light that would combine the two and have just two modes - full beam both lights on and dipped, only the B+M on set to low.
 
Which did you go for? The ones I use I can aim with the fall off being about 35-40m down the road without glare issues.
 
Your comments threw me as one of the reasons I run 3 is because the beam isn't wide enough so I have the side ones rotated about 10-15 degrees off centre to make a much wider throw then the overlap in the middle gives great road illumination for the speeds which can be achieved with the velo.

I looked at the the Ixon IQ Speed but it doesn't seem to have the same illumination power as their Lumotech range even though the spec sheet says it's got a higher output. I think your set up is nice because you've got two completely independent lights which means if one fails you've got a backup. Something I try to do on my bikes.
 
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