Rock lights.

[Jeep07]

I got to thinking about this and decided to do some research.

What color works best?

White obviously lights stuff up good but it also ruins your scotopic vision (night vision) and some people said green is the new night vision color but it turns out its not. It actually is detected by the Rods in your eyes which contain a chemical called rhodopsin which is a chemical that your eyes use to detect light. Light rays over 620nm affect the rhodopsin in your eyes (bleach it) and it can take up to an hour for your eyes to resupply the chemical for your night vision. Turn out that red light is close to below the 620nm mark so your rods don't detect it as well so the chemical isn't bleached from your eyes so you retain your scotopic vision.

How does this affect rock lights? Well if you kill your headlights and running lights and only run red LED rock lights you and your spotter will retain your night vision better yet still be able to see under your rig or in front if you put some red LED's out front as well.

Just figured I would share what the wonderful world of the interwebs taught me tonight :)

[Want2Wheel]

Nice work Dr.

[BillM]

We could have just asked Rob's dad about all this. ;)

[SamuraiGuyTN]

I know when Im flying at night we try to always use red lights in the cockpit. SO I would also think that a bright red light would do the trick. I would think people seeing the green color in night vision goggles would think green would be the color of choice. I know first hand that a bright green light at night can hurt your eyes too.
Good research Wes :smokin:

[tjrockcrawler]

Good research Wes

I remember as a boy scout the old "L" shaped flashlight with the colored lenses. Just from my experience using that, a red filtered light source caused a loss of depth perception for me, at least.

I also remember that red light was not as easily visible unless you were right up on it. Of course I'm sure that old military flashlight was no where the brightness of today?s LED's.

I can't really say what the best color to use is, because I have only seen one color, white. I think, a more naturally colored light source would be best for rock lights


Just .02

[BlueCrawler]

Yes I can see how green is not the color for night vision. Yes NODs are green when looking through them but when you take them away from your face you cant see a thing. It just like saying white is the color for night vision because you can see in white light but when you take it away you cant see athing. Red has been used for a long time for two reasons you are still able to see when you turn off the light and red light dosnt carry as far thus tacticle. Great research

[Andy's01]

Bill was that you with me in the campgrounds at Harlan looking at the buggie with red rock lights. You could barley tell that they were even on. I asked the guy how he liked them and he hated them. He said that they just dont lite the ground up well enough to see any real detail. He planned to take them off and get white lights.

This is super info and I bet the red lights are awsome for close vision work like map reading, guages and other things in the dark so as to not affect your vision but how important is night vision when driving a jeep at night when you have your lights on????

[Bluegill]

I'm with Andy on this - and I like my white LED's - they're soft enough to be much more pleasant on the eyes than headlights or tail lights are. Ryan has a good point on the red lenses affecting depth perception - being in a fairly small enclosed space with nothing but red light (shipboard) can easily cause bruises on the ole noggin.

I have thought about making some custom LED pods and testing them - for a crude example (in a 4-LED pod), using white-red-white-blue bulbs simultaneously.

[BillM]

Could have been Andy.