Looking at light on a garage is one thing. Driving with them is another. I've driven with SS'*, as have many others, and I believe from personal experience on BOTH of my Bonnevilles that it was a good investment. All weather conditions.

Far as Rain and good weather driving i would go with the IR any day

I has SS in my car before, and WOW these BLOW them away, Before i could see a big light output difference when i turned on my Driving lights, and Now when i turn them on with the IRs in, you cant even see them turn on.
Thats how much brighter the IR ones are compared to the SS


Take a look for your self, The Silver Starts i have Boxed in Red

now, this is a cool blue high beam in the low beam spot compared to stock, but its pretty difficult to say there is no difference based on my picture (white levels come into play im sure)

Good test; But why did you conduct the test with the high beam bulbs? Granted I have them in my low beam spot. Most people I know use their low beams more (depends on the kind of driving you normally do.) Using the SS bulbs in my car I've noticed better visibility then an OEM spec bulb, but I find it harder to see in the wet under most conditions.

Ed

I did NOT do that test. If you read above. high beams allows a nice show of spead with less of an intense spot. Not to mention this was posted on HIDplanet where a lot of people use HID low beams and people are always looking for something better for high beams.

Nice controlled sampling, Rob. I didn't pursue the direct light photos as I thought reflected/perceived is what we are after.

Put the shots up in Photoshop and used Levels layer to measure reflected brightness resident in the photos. Evaluated highest focus light using lasso selection on two tolerances 50 and 75.
- Used an analog tube high definition monitor set to Adobe Gamma values. (Sorry guys, our LCD screens are garbage for precison processing. Particularly when you want WYSIWYG between the displayed and printed photo)

Based on this I would have to go with SubjectC or SubjectD

50 Tolerance- this is the hot center of the reflected light. About 2 or 3 feet as seen.
SubjectC is slightly brighter and yet tighter spread than SubjectD. SubjectA is a joke. SubjectB doesn't have the amount of energy of C and D.

75 Tolerance- bigger area, now about 4 or 5 feet. Same thing between SubjectC and SubjectD. SubjectB is falling a little further behind. SubjectA, bahahaha.

There was one idiosynchracy of SubjectD. When I checked the brightness of the darkness , SubjectD is well ahead of the rest. So in the short range, SubjectD has a wider dispersion.

The questions begged by all of this... Are the differences between C, D and even B perceptually significant? I have no way to draw any statistical conclusions to that. Plus the eyeball and it'* neural accompanyment has its own preferences.

The bias I bring to the lights is that I have prefered the SSs. They behave like bringing the contrast up on your computer display. It doesn't seem that i have as much light as an OEM across the entire field of vision, but I can see moving and highly reflective objects from further away. Like streets signs, speed limit signs, deer etc.

edit: I do agree that $50 for one set of lights, and those things had better light things up like 46th and Broadway.