Effective Lumens

Effective Lumens

What is it?

• A measurement of how much light shines out of a directed light source, like a lamp, and lands within a defined area. 
• We use the goniometer to measure light output, which “adds up” the total light to determine how many lumens must be shining to that area.
• This is technically the best way to describe total lumens shining from a lamp, but it is not widely used because it requires a goniometer. Also, it’s somewhat subjective on how big the “area” is to collect light.
• Lazer Lamps refers to “Field of Vision Flux” to define Effective Lumens that land within the driver’s field of view.
  
  

How do we use it at Diode?

• Engineering uses this to see how accurate our optical design is.
• We can consider publishing this data, but we do not right now because of a lack of customer understanding. 
• Effective Lumens is always far, far lower than Raw Lumens because it’s the total light shining out of the lamp, only to a specific area. 
• A headlight, for example, uses a 1500 lumen halogen bulb, but may only have 400-500 lumens, which seems very low to the consumer.