LED tail/brake lights

I want to drop the draw on the system so I can add more illumination to help other drivers see me. I'm just starting out with this. I'm a bit hesitant, yet determined. The hesitation comes from my inexperience with electrons, and some trepidation that PO may have tinkered with the harness. (I'll be posting a pic of my under-seat elsewhere.)

Anyway, I've taken photos of the tail lights before and after the swap, in both low and high mode.

As I did this, I found that the PO had attached the after-factory mini-stalks to the wrong bolt holes. They were mounted to the aft bolt hole for the hand grip. (The grip was gone. I just pulled the grip off my 82 and put it on here.)

I want to rip off the mini-stalks. Yeah, I like the low-profile, but I hate the low illumination and, especially, the low reliability. These have not worked propery practically since I got the bike. One front bulb or the other keeps blowing. So I've got good reason to remove these and put on something brighter and more reliable.

Btw, I've looked through the posts in the mod forum. I appreciate what I have learned there, but I need to know more to make my next step. Feel free to make comments.

 

Nice effect. Which led towers did you put in, the red, white or amber?

 

Guess I coulda mentioned that the first time -- these are red LEDs. I'm using the OEM lens, so I avoided the amber. I suspect the amber appearance is an artifact of the light setting on the camera.

 

Where did you get the LED bulb towers? And how much of a difference do you notice in person? The pictures seem to be fairly noticable, but in person is always just a bit different.

Also, how much were the LED's?

 

Nifty....

 

Best way to photograph something like this is with a manual setting on the camera. Most digitals don't have this. But with a 35mm yu can get an accurate registering of the brightness increase. Use the camera given exposure such as 125/sec F5.6 Use these settings on manual so the camera won't alter the exposure for a brighter light and photo both lights. Just a little tip from your friendly XJ photographer. :wink:

 

I watched these on eBay for a while, and compared pricing at a couple local brick-and-mortar shops. The best price I found locally was $13.98 for one bulb tower. On ebay, I got the pair for $19.98 including shipping (with insurance). The specific vendor was http://stores.ebay.com/Automotive-Lighting-Strobes. As of tonight, he has four auctions for these running.

 

When I first turned the bike on (just turning the switch to "on," not starting it, so just off the battery), I did a double-take, wondering if somehow they were in high-mode. That's how bright the low-mode seemed to me. When I applied the brakes, the lights got proportionally brighter.

 

My camera is Konica-Minolta A2 (8MP). I had it set on aperture-priority at f3.5. I wanted to minimize the depth of field as much as possible to the plane of the lights. If memory serves, the chip selected 1/25 for the shutter speed. It's good to know what settings to apply next time I try to shoot something like this. I used continuous tone for many years. (For the few of you who may not know what continuous tone means, basically, it means a film camera rather than digital). I've had a number of photos published and win awards, but nothing of subject matter like this. (Think landscape and portraiture.) So I was very picky about the digital camera I bought. The A2 allows aperture priority, shutter priority, full auto, full manual (and several other program settings). I tend to use AP the vast majority of the time. When I shot these picks, I didn't even think to check my color temperature until after the fact. I had it set on auto white balance. With my subject being taillights, I needed to switch to daylight (and to know the f-stop and shutter speed that work with this kind of work).