Night vision (not the goggles)

As I've gotten older, I have had increased issues with seeing at night. This occurs mostly when I'm driving, or when there is another light source distracting my field of vision. I find it harder for my eyes to adjust to what I may be focusing on. For this reason, I have been finding lights with more throw to be my preference. It cuts through the "noise" and enables me to see what I want with better contrast.

Years ago I liked lights that were floodier. I'm curious if others have also experienced this shift....

theyre making car headlight too bright and intense. i thought my eye sight was going as well until i started googling it. you can find all sorts of things online with people griping about the modern headlight.

Definitely age related.

A couple of explanations from the interweb.

Pupils shrink and don't dilate as much in the dark as we age, reducing the amount of light entering the eye. Various reports indicate that the retina of an 80-year-old receives far less light than the retina of a 20-year-old. This can make older drivers function as though they are wearing dark sunglasses at night.

The aging cornea and lens in the eye become less clear as we age, causing light to scatter inside the eye, which increases glare. These changes also reduce contrast sensitivity — the ability to discern subtle differences in brightness — making it harder to see objects on the roadway at night.


I wear spectacles now and find that when driving at night I choose contact lenses due to less refraction of light in the thinner lenses.

As an old cyclist, who routinely rides at dusk into night, I have been using cycling specific glasses that are polarized with lighter tinted amber lenses for years, decades actually. It won't make your night vision clarity that of a 20 yr. old again, but these features do work remarkably well.

The benefit of lighter tinted amber lenses aid in depth perception and clarity and boost contrast, and polarization really cuts the glare and reflection from oncoming headlights, streetlights, etc.

You don't have to spend a lot either to try them, as a cursory Google of "night glasses/amber lens/polarized" brings up scads of choices at many pricepoints.

tab665 said:

theyre making car headlight too bright and intense. i thought my eye sight was going as well until i started googling it. you can find all sorts of things online with people griping about the modern headlight.

Click to expand...

Headlight brightness is limited through government regulation and hasn't changed in years. Anyone using brighter headlights then regulated is breaking the law and can be charged. What has changed however is the colour temperature of headlights. Many modern headlights use much cooler temperatures theses days. It's sad too as cooler temperatures are inferior for a number of reasons yet people seem to rush out and buy their expensive and short lived Silverstar Ultras thinking they are getting more brightness. Really, what they are getting is a light that causes much worse glare and is thus inferior at penetrating dust, fog, rain, snow, etc. Pretty much the only benefit of cooler headlights is the added blue in the spectrum helps keep you awake due to melatonin suppression.

I have always preferred throwers and one of the things I've found to be a disadvantage in the lumen wars is everybody makes lights that spread light wider.

Part is the physical shape of the LED, but part is more spread is more popular. Lights from around 2014 were my pinacle period. Ones like the Streamlight TL2 LED and the Pelican 2350 Gen 1, but the 320 SureFire G2x Pro was a goody. Lots of candela. Maglites ML25 was scoffed at by many for having less than 200 lumens in 2016, but it was a great light if one prefers a nice punch hole drilled through darkness, yet enough spread to not trip over roots or sidewalk cracks.

bykfixer said:

I have always preferred throwers and one of the things I've found to be a disadvantage in the lumen wars is everybody makes lights that spread light wider.

Part is the physical shape of the LED, but part is more spread is more popular. Lights from around 2014 were my pinacle period. Ones like the Streamlight TL2 LED and the Pelican 2350 Gen 1, but the 320 SureFire G2x Pro was a goody. Lots of candela. Maglites ML25 was scoffed at by many for having less than 200 lumens in 2016, but it was a great light if one prefers a nice punch hole drilled through darkness, yet enough spread to not trip over roots or sidewalk cracks.

Click to expand...

Too many lumens in a floody light can work against you if you are trying to see something beyond the distance the light will throw - the dreaded impenetrable wall of light that kills your night vision and blocks out everything in the distance. The ML25 is what got me to give up on chasing lumens altogether. I found that the ML25's beam was far more useful than the 95 lumen brighter 272 lumen Mini Mag Pro which has a brighter but much smaller spill and a larger but less intense hot spot while the ML25 has that intense throwy hot spot surrounded by that huge just bright enough spill that keeps you from tripping on things.

This reminds me that i got two hi cri 4000K xh-p 50.2 to install in my extra light for my car. Forgot them in a drawer somewhere. The stock xhp 50 is too blue. Prob around 6000K. Hate that in the winter.

Dave D said:

Definitely age related.

A couple of explanations from the interweb.

Pupils shrink and don't dilate as much in the dark as we age, reducing the amount of light entering the eye. Various reports indicate that the retina of an 80-year-old receives far less light than the retina of a 20-year-old. This can make older drivers function as though they are wearing dark sunglasses at night.

The aging cornea and lens in the eye become less clear as we age, causing light to scatter inside the eye, which increases glare. These changes also reduce contrast sensitivity — the ability to discern subtle differences in brightness — making it harder to see objects on the roadway at night.


I wear spectacles now and find that when driving at night I choose contact lenses due to less refraction of light in the thinner lenses.

Click to expand...

This is pretty fascinating, as it works against dark adapted vision, yet is not responsible for it. Rhodopsin, quickly broken down by light, is what gives us the ability to see almost in the dark, given enough time for our eyes to adapt to the darkness.

Dark adapted vision takes varying time to recover, at best I think about 10 minutes to get possibly 80% back. Half the reason I sought these forums initially was because I detected my night vision was taking longer to recover, and I needed a flashlight. I do not have any citations or evidence, but I bet the ability to build up rhodopsin in the eye varies measurably between age groups and probably things like different cultures, geographic locations, and diet.

night.hoodie said:

... but I bet the ability to build up rhodopsin in the eye varies measurably between things like...diet.

Click to expand...

^Lol^

easiest thing you can try, is yellow glasses, you can get them at most pharmacies (right aid, cvs...) they are actually made for such purpose, night driving, they filter out blue spectrum, and make lights easier on the eye. they do not make things brighter, thou it may seem that way, just easier to deal with glare. i use them in rain and snow, they do help taking strain off the eyes.

To be honest, my dad's late 90s 2d maglite with a 30 lumen cheap dorcy drop in works great. Great throw and spill at the same time. I mean just right because
it helps you to see everything you want to see yet it is soft on the eyes--no glareback. I'm amazed at how well I can see with 30 lumens of white light.

tab665 said:

theyre making car headlight too bright and intense. i thought my eye sight was going as well until i started googling it. you can find all sorts of things online with people griping about the modern headlight.

Click to expand...

Every previous generation complains about the newest generation of head lights, seriously I recall all of the older folks complaining about those new fangled, aerodynamic halo-gen head lights that started appearing on cars when I was much younger. Then it was the new HID head lights that came along just after. Now it's the LED head lights and soon to follow it will be those fancy LASER head lights.

Honestly I can't say I've noticed a shift like that yet...but I have had to get new glasses to see just as well as before so it may be coming.

I myself love to see the incandescent color headlights. Brings back the 80,s in my head. Just finished season 3 of stranger things and was reminiscing on all the incandescent style headlights. A fair amount of flashlight use in the show as well.

I got behind an ambulance yesterday with LED brake lights so bright I was seeing spots when looking away. That was in the daytime.

Now the rear panel of it had giant red and yellow reflective markings so bright Stevie Wonder could see them. Yet at each traffic signal these gigantic mega bright red things would flicker when it hit the brakes then when steady on literally blinded you…… in the daytime.

I thought "holy crap, at night that would be dangerous". Now I can see if it's blasting down the road with sirens on or sitting on the roadway in emergency mode but sheesh. Pulling down the sunshield didn't help either. It was like looking at the sun.

Can't imagine how bright their headlights are.

Where I tend to travel there are enough free lumens at night that new headlights aint too bad. But when on a byway, in fog or rain it can be pretty bad on a twisty road with sketchy to no markings and 10' (or less) lanes. I just slow way down and zap 'em with my high beam when they are too close to zap me back.

Ever get behind a salt truck in the winter when there spreading at night! OMG the blinking led's they use will blow your night vision for an hour. I mean really even with bad visibility you ain't going to run into the back of that thing.

I used to drive one tg. I pittyed the folks behind me.

Lol oh the name you guys get called. But where would we be if we didn't have you?

My least favorite duty was pushing hills. First off some were scarey. But mostly because the kids would be so bummed out.

These days kids might even shootyerass for pushing snow off their fun park. Back then they just pelted the truck with snowballs.



One reason I like classic LED flashlights is because the 100-ish lumen kind used pencil beam output. But bragging about 125 lumen flashlights in 2015 and 16 met with a lot of crickets chirping in response. 500 lumens or bust. Then the 1000 bar got reached and the pencil beam flashlight became like a pair of Chuck Taylor sneakers during the days of pump up Reeboks.