Normal brightness of amber markers in headlight assembly?

While waiting to pick up a passenger at night, parked on the side of the road where it was very dark, I happened to turn the headlight switch one click towards "on". This lights up the front amber lamps at the top of the unit on each side. Except I couldn't see any evidence of that on the sidewalk or street. On returning home pulled into the driveway behind another car, tried one click again, and this time the amber lights could be seen to light up, but the reflection was very dim. I had my son look at them and he said they also looked very dim when viewed directly. Like "why would they ever make it that dim"? The normal and high beams were the expected brightness when that switch was at two clicks. The outer plastic is clear, no significant cloudiness.

I don't think I ever looked at this bulb at night before, so not sure if these were always dim (perhaps not the right bulbs installed?), if the bulbs are getting old, or some other problem, like burnt sockets. The car was in READY for these tests, with the inside voltmeter reading 14.1V, so not a low voltage issue, at least systemically.

Or maybe these amber corner markers are always dim and there is no problem at all?

Edit: looking out the front window, if the "door lock" button on the fob is pressed the amber lights are much brighter when they flash. From this distance I cannot tell if it is the same light coming on though.

 

This morning confirmed that the "lock door" button amber light is a different and much larger bulb than the marker light. Oddly the bigger bulb itself is amber colored while the smaller one appears to be clear behind amber plastic. The little bulb as viewed through the amber headlight plastic does not appear to be dark like the one in ChapmanF's picture.

Regarding those LED replacements, are they visible from the side of the car when lit? The stock bulb is essentially omnidirectional, but surface mounted LED bulbs are usually pretty directional, with most of the light going along the normal vector to the chip and little emitted in the plane of the chip. For LEDs below the plane of the chip is typically completely blocked by the circuit board, whereas an incandescent can emit a fair amount of light "backwards", unless it is blocked by some part of the headlight. (The hot part is way up in the glass part of the bulb.)