The LED SAE J583 Fog Pod & Fog Light Review

I appreciate the feed back a ton! Great honest answer and opinion backed with facts. I’m going to give the sports a shot. And hopefully have some real world tests soon. If they don’t work out I’ll likely upgrade later. Hopefully if snow returns I can share some experiences soon!

 

I actually ordered them earlier today on sale. I’m glad I got the info, I contemplated the pro’s but really just can’t afford them right now and the sport option will still be a huge upgrade for me. We get a lot of fog where I live and these stock fogs just don’t cut it.

 

The pre-fix selective yellow Bajas should have higher lens temps compared to the SS3 Sport. Baja's lights are not nearly as optimized to the performance level of Diode Dynamics, they take a larger performance loss by using a 5000k emitter corrected to 3000k output (2000k delta) vs Diode Dynamics using a selective yellow specific 4000k emitter corrected to 3000k (1000k delta), which will be more efficient, meaning less losses to heat. The SS3 sports are also lower power draw, meaning less heat, and yet the SS3s still provide 2x the output intensity of Baja. But once you place the 'SAE fix' aluminum block out Vader optic plate in place on the Bajas to fix the excessive glare, you will shield more of that forward light and heat, causing the lens temp to drop.

Baja's SAE selective yellow fogs are lower output intensity than Toyotas stock H11 fogs. Just sayin.

Edit: On my To-Do list soon is compare Baja pre/post fix lights.

 

That’s a lot to absorb!

 

Just ordered my second pair today for the Wife.

 

This is before and after lowering the fogs.
I can tell that they dont overlap with the lowbeams anymore.

 

I’ve read over this a few times. A couple months back I purchased KC g4 fog lights. Kind of wish I had went with the yellow instead. Now seeing these DD ss3 they seem to be a better option. Has anyone else made the switch from KC to DD? Thanks!

 

I've got KC ambers & like 'em just fine. Need to aim up just a bit but i'm contacting the plastic bezel & need to sort this out. Just need to get a wee bit higher, no biggie.

 

"Selective Yellow" is a relatively broad-spectrum illumination. "Amber", which is a signaling color (and does not meet SAE/DOT or ECE requirements for fog lights), is more of a narrow spectrum. Yes, there has been quite a bit of philosophizing around it, just ask the French.

One arguable advantage of yellow fog lights, used as intended as fog lights, in about the only conditions that they provide benefit, "pea soup fog", is that your glowing yellow orb may be more visible to someone in their white headlamps, barreling down on you at speeds higher than the conditions demand.

 

Says Amber on the KC site. All I know is they ain't white.

 

Please refer to the appropriate SAE and/or ECE documents. Amber and Selective Yellow are not interchangeable in the US, UK, or EU, except perhaps in marketing materials.

Selective Yellow is a desaturated region in color space. It is far from monochromatic. In general, it can't be specified by a single wavelength.

Amber is not "orange". It is a highly saturated color range between what people consider yellow and orange. The range you give for wavelength falls well outside of what is permitted for Amber.

See, for example
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_yellow
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amber_(color)#SAE/ECE_amber

"Just sayin'" is appropriate.

Removing or reducing blue wavelengths from the light allows the optical system, especially your eye, to focus the light more accurately. This is due to the differential refraction of lens, not anything to do with scattering off of droplets. Regrettably, the aesthetic push to high color temperatures goes counter to this.

 

The color temperature of the emitted light has a minor effect the power dissipation within the LED.

https://www.lumileds.com/products/high-power-leds/luxeon-z-es
https://www.lumileds.com/uploads/542/DS134-luxeon-z-es-datasheet-pdf

For low-CRI devices (70, probably what is used for automotive lighting)

4000°K -- 133 lm/W
5000°K -- 138 lm/W
5700°K -- 138 lm/W
6500°K -- 138 lm/W

For high-CRI devices (90)

2700°K -- 92 lm/W
3000°K -- 97 lm/W
3500°K -- 101 lm/W
4000°K -- 105 lm/W
5000°K -- 110 lm/W

So not a huge difference in power as light vs. power dissipation (heat + light)

Edit:

Heating of the lens comes from both the heat generated within the chip, as well as energy absorbed by the lens from the light traveling through it. You can't directly convert lumens into Watts, but for a back-of-the-envelope calculation

A source radiating a power of one watt of light in the color for which the eye is most efficient (a wavelength of 555 nm, in the green region of the optical spectrum) has luminous flux of 683 lumens. So a lumen represents at least 1/683 watts of visible light power, depending on the spectral distribution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumen_(unit)​

So you're looking at, very roughly, a couple Watts of luminous power going through the lens. I'd guess it absorbs somewhere between around 10% ("clear") to 50% ("Amber") of that energy for a tungsten source. Cooler color temperatures have more energy in the blue, which is blocked by yellow-to-red filtering, so the heating effect may be slightly greater in those cases.

 

With everything else being equal the 5000k emitter based lamp is going to have more filtration as the delta from the source color to the output color is larger. The 5000k lamp is absorbing 2000k in color vs the 4000k lamp is absorbing 1000k in color to hit the 3000k selective yellow. That filtered light is energy, which when filtered/absorbed translates to heat. So the more light that is filtered to correct the color, the hotter the lens will become. Stated differently, the Diode Dynamics selective yellow is more efficient with lower filtration losses and therefore produces less waste heat at the lens compared to Baja.

And as pointed out above when everything is not equal, the hotter chips will input more heat energy into the system, in the case of the SS3 Pros that is a significant amount. In the case of the Baja vs SS3 Sport, the Bajas are higher power at 22w vs the Sports at 14.5w.

 

Yes, in that case the difference is negligible. As @jeffsf posted, quoted below, the main difference is the lumen output will vary just slightly. Automotive LEDs are in the low 70 CRI range. With the same input power the 5000k emitter produces 3.7% more lumens from the same input power, or in other words to produce the same output the 4000k will need 3.7% more watts, which is about 0.5w in the case of the Luxeon Z ES used by the SS3 Sport.