Ideal headlamps?

Some headlamp manufacturers might be stretching the truth a little, especially since they know that almost zero consumers are going to have any kind of light intensity measuring system. Some other headlamp manufacturers take the high road and try to appeal to the technical types like on the candlepower forum.

Some manufacturers measure the backend power drawn from the battery, and they make the false assumption that all of the power is going as light out the front. If they use watts, that is your first clue.

The human eye is not particularly good at estimating absolute intensity, partly because there are different degrees of night vision going on. However, the eye can be better at comparing two adjacent headlamp beams. You can often tell which one is stronger, but that assumes that the two beams are the same shape (there are spot lights and there are flood lights). To make it more complicated, different headlamp devices have different spectra. Some have a broader spectrum like daylight, but most have a very narrow spectrum like a laser. That produces the appearance of color in a headlamp, and different colors give different perspectives of intensity.

I'm satisfied with a headlamp that has some low intensity like for night trail walking, and that is maybe 5-10 lumens, plus a high intensity for spotting wildlife, and that is maybe 75-100 lumens, but that is just for a short duration.

–B.G.–

I don't know what beam type the photon has, but if it's focused into a hot spot, it's possible that it could look brighter.

The petzl e+lite is a flood beam. Lumens is a measurement of the total amount of light put out. Lux is a measurement of the light at a certain point. I'm not sure if my definitions will hold up to candlepowerforums scrutiny, but close enough.

So 30 lumens in a flood beam may not look as bright as 10 lumens in a tight spotlight.

There's also the thing of lumens and perceived brightness. it takes four times the lumens to appear twice as bright.

Then there's also the thing of batteries. The e+lite isn't regulated, so if you've already used it for an hour, it won't be putting out 30 lumens. Whereas a regulated light will be.

hope this helps.

PEtzyl Zipka imo

I believe I have found what bob g found, you need around 8 lumens to see a trail safely. I use the low mid setting on the zebralight h51, that's I guess about 8 lumens. That gives a claimed 25 hours or so on one AA battery, I believe that's fairly accurate. 3 AAA batteries will only give the life of the weakest charge in that set of 3, one AA will give all the charge of that AA, something not often discussed but highly relevant for actual use and life of batteries. 8 lumens is enough light to illuminate a technical steep trail safely from what I have seen. I would not use less than that myself.

It depends on how many hours you want I believe, and if you are going to use the light for actual night hiking, or just around camp lighting. 2 lumens is good for around camp, that's fine for most things except reading, depends on the person's eyes I guess.

I've got the black diamond ion which is 22 lumens bright with a low setting that is probably 6 or 8. I think it burns for 25 hours on low, and that's usually what I take on most trips because it only weighs 28 grams – so it's only slightly heavier than the human soul. I keep a tiny photon style light (princeton I think) on a lanyard with my SAK and whistle as a back up.

One of my favorite lights for – that's borderline overkill but light and high quality I think – is the Princeton Tec Remix. It's around 2.5 ounces, 100 lumens, and has a a single bright LED and three smaller LEDs. I like that it's all black band, lamp and all and it does not involve all the goofy colors that so many headlamps seem to use these days.

Lastly – there are so many GREAT little EDC lights to borrow a preppers term. I have a single AA Fenix (LD01 I think) and a AAA LD05. I also have a single AA oLight. All of these are pretty amazing and have great burn times for the light they put out. the oLight is downright dangerous; it could be used as a weapon. But, these little guys can clip on a belt, belt loop or hat bill. In the future I may resort to carrying only one of these and ditch headlamps altogether, but the BD ion works great, and as little as I use a light, is all I need for now.

Another user here posted about the Klarus Mi6, and I want one. It looks like a lot of light in a small package – kind of like the Zebralight headlamp, but I think it's over 100 lumens. As Bob G. and others noted, it really depends on what you're doing and when/where you're going. For the money – if you just need to find stuff in the dark, go with the ion, or even a photon freedom with the hat clip.

One note, I like to make sure if I'm bringing a GPS, or any other electronics, that I can match batteries for all such items and not have to carry a variety of spares, but if the light – like my Remix – requires more than one battery, this effort becomes pretty moot.