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HIDs: out of the car and over your shoulder! by Ross Tester It’s taken a while but at last, High Intensity Discharge (HID) lamps are starting to appear in places other than just in car headlights. Y ou must have noticed them as you drive along: along- two facts alone mean they are much more efficient. But side a conventional car headlight (ie, filament type they also offer significantly longer life (3000 vs 700-1000 and probably of the tungsten-halogen variety) they hours) and studies have shown they actually make night look positively blue – or is it that even tungsten-halogen driving safer. For an explanation on how HIDs work, refer to the articles lamps look quite yellow alongside them? More recently, HID lamps have started to filter down to in our February 1999 and/or May 2003 issues the more mundane type of vehicle, although it’s true to say that even today they are not as popular as tungsten-halogen HID Spotlights We wondered how long it would be before HID lamps lamps as original equipment. That’s almost certainly because of cost, where auto manufacturers look to save every started making inroads into “hand-held” spotlights. We say hand-held with a grain of cent possible. salt (or perhaps a full shaker!). In the auto accessory stores, The ones we are talking about HID replacement kits have also are more “luggable” than handstarted to make their presence held – which is why they invarifelt, even if at a premimum ably have a shoulder strap! You over “normal” lamps. Still, the know, the type of spotlights you margin between the two is eversee in your local auto accesdecreasing. sory store offering “a million” For those who have been candlepower – or maybe even driving around with their eyes ten million candlepower. When closed, HID lamps offer several you’re talking those numbers, advantages. For a start, they are who is going to argue? brighter. At the same time, they Just think, though, how much require less energy from the There’s no denying it’s a HID! Jaycar were never ones light ten million candles would car’s electrical system. These to hide their light under a bushel . . . (ouch!) 16  Silicon Chip siliconchip.com.au produce. A tad more than one of these spotlights? Yeah, we think so too! By the way, 1 lumen roughly equates to 12.57 candlepower, so does one of these “ten million” babies put out more than 795,000 lumens (10,000,000/12.57)? Hmmm . . . maybe not! However, this type of spotlight is very bright and is ideal for, camping, 4WD’ing, nocturnal animal observation/hunting and so on. They are also used by emergency services, police and rescue organisations, etc. But we digress: a recent SILICON CHIP advert for Jay-car Electronics got our attention when it claimed to be the first spotlight with a HID lamp. This we just had to see. So as soon as stock actually arrived in the country, Jaycar Electronics sent us one to examine. It arrived with the battery already charged so we were able to use it immediately. Incidentally, the rechargeable battery gives about 50 minutes of continuous use and it recharges either from a mains plugpack or a car cigarette lighter lead, both of which are supplied. It weighs in at a rather hefty 3.8kg so the comments we made before about luggability certainly apply. First impressions count – and to say we were impressed is an understatement. Yes, it had a very bright, very blue/ white light – just like the automotive versions. In fact, it hurt to look into the beam (but no-one would be silly enough to do that, would they?). Fortunately, we had one of those mega-candlepower quartz/halogen spotlights with which to do a direct comparison. It’s an Arlec RT10000 which we bought a year or so ago from a local auto parts shop. Apart from being bright yellow (the Jaycar one is basic black!) the two were quite similar in size and weight. We’d always been pretty impressed with its performance – especially its brightness. It was great to take camping! Well, the HID model from Jaycar appeared much better. What’s more, it appeared to have a more focuss ed beam so it was even better at lighting up distant objects. Subjective reaction was fine – but could we confirm it? Part of the photographic setup at SILICON CHIP includes a very accurate Minolta Flash Meter – we use it to measure the output of our studio strobe during photography settings. This meter (fortunately!) also includes an “ambient light” setting – in other words, you can measure the amount of light falling on a subject without flash. And our experience is that it is dead accurate. Placing the light meter at a set distance from each of the two spotlights, we found that the HID model was exactly one f-stop brighter than the quartz halogen model. For those not into photography, the difference between any two f-stops is double or half the amount of light. So instead of a subjective “yes the HID is brighter” we could now confirm it was twice as bright! Power consumption was also significantly lower with the Jaycar HID, as you would expect. It was rated at 35W, whereas the Arlec has a Philips H4 halogen lamp rated at 100W – virtually three times the current draw from the 12V, 7Ah battery. Which one would we choose? Just on light levels alone, we’d choose the HID model over the quartz halogen model any time. Except for one tiny detail: the HID models are also about twice the price. Our Arlec spottie sells at the local Super Cheap Auto store for about $89.00 (every now and then it’s on special, save 10%). The Jaycar ST-3369 HID Spotlight sells for $165. So for twice as bright, you’ll pay nearly twice as much. Actual rated output of the Jaycar HID model is 3300 lumens, or 262 candlepower. It just goes to show how ludicrous the claims of those ten million candlepower spotties really are! Is it worth the extra? Obviously, that depends on your application and whether you need the performance. But for our purposes, we would suggest that the HID model gives you so much more that it is well worth paying the premium that it commands. SC Jaycar Rechargeable 35W HID spotlight (Cat ST-3369) –$165 at all Jaycar Electronics stores This photo shows the actual HID bulb in the Jaycar ST-3369 HID Spotlight. A typical HID bulb showing its construction. siliconchip.com.au May 2009  17