Headlamps

Two things I look for in a headlamp: 1. A low intensity red beam. In a crowded hut in the middle of the night there is nothing more inconsiderate than turning on a full-blast, drop possums at 100m, LED headlamp. Every light sleeper in the room, the ones out on the porch, and even camping upstream under the trees - is now wide awake. And thinking bad thoughts about you. Besides there are some situations where you don't want to loose your night-sight. I much prefer night-tramping with the least possible amount of extra light. 2. A fool-proof off-switch; preferable a secondary kill of some kind. Nothing worse than pulling it out from the odds and ends bag and finding that it's been accidentally knocked on 24hrs ago and a mockingly feeble little glimmer is all that's left. Also I'm now in the habit of carrying a secondary spare lamp. I've had reason to need one on at least three occasions now. Another interesting thing about LED headlamps is that if you are using them in the rain there is a strong total internal reflection (TIR) within each droplet and much of the light is bounced right back at the source. Which if the lamp is sitting on your forehead - means a whole lot of it is coming right back into your eyes. The effect becomes a lot like walking in this big, bright glowing ball of light and depending on how intense the rain is - it's hard to see more than about 5-10m. Probably the simplest thing to try (and this only just occurred to me) would be to carry the lamp in your hand at waist level. The way TIR works is that the reflected light is most strongly directed back at the source, and if your holding the lamp well away from your eyes it might greatly reduce the effect. Either that or experimenting with polarising filters?

Agree re red beam - I thought it was a bit of a gimmick when it arrived (I won one of the new Led Lenser headlamps in a competition) but have used it frequently since and now wouldn't be without it.

The red light certainly helps but still there is nothing like turning to talk to someone while cooking dinner by headlamp light. Leds are exceptionally bad for this. Ive had it done to me several times and im sure Ive done it to others. normal sight does return in a few minutes but anyway. Ive got in the habit of covering the lamp with my hand as I turn. Best lamp Ive ever had was a half watt katmandu one but I lost it down a Telco duct while using it working nights. Now using a similar wattage Doite one that has the advantage of sharing the same battery as my camera so less spare batteries to carry.

don't use headlamps as I find it hard to see dips / rises when walking with them as there are no shadows with the beam in li e with your li e of sight. Hand held torch casts a visible shadow making these more obvious. Our mountain bike group uses Aurora torches. Nominally 700 lumen, and as bright as anything I've met. Steel case, so bulletproof but not for the ultralighters. Takes 1x18650 rechargable, so you need a charger for those too. Available for 3xAAA too but battery life too short to be useful. On 18650 battery, 2 hrs on high - good enough for nighttime rough mountainbiking, and 40hrs on low - good enough for tramping. If you get em, go for the 2 setting, not 5 setting model as cycling through all 5 settings to tuen off is a pain. Available on dx.com for abt $35 last I bought.

Do you know what, I'm just using one of those Everyready headlamps you can buy at the Red Shed and hypermarche for $25. I do very little travel at night, the two times I used it for this it worked perfectly fine. It is fine for use around hut and camp, trips to the toilet etc. I have been using it for 3 years now and have had no problems with it, it has been water immersed (by accident) and dropped and still soldiers on. One of my tramping companions brought a Lenser recently for over $120 and it died on the first tramp he used it on. Sometimes it doesn't need to cost a lot or be the most advanced item to do the job.

@madpom. Interesting. So far we have four points against headlamps: 1. Accidentally blinding others by turning your head. 2. TIR in raindrops creating a reflected 'glowback' which greatly limits vision. 3. Poor outlining and shadowing of bumps and hollows in the track 4. Relative fragility compared to a hand-held. As for using them in the rain - Friday night tramps into the first hut are a bit of a Tararua tradition!

Was meaning tramping. Find myself forever stumbling as I didn't realise that was a lump / hollow with headtorches. Probably relevent mountain biking too - About 50:50 split between people using one one helmet and people using 2: one on helmet and one on handlebars. I prefer 2 as it lights up noth whrre uoure looking and whete you're going. Cable tie the torch to helmet / handlebars works fine. Cheaper to fix when you come off!

About five years ago a group of us we heading into Kime on an Easter Thursday evening. Just as we got onto Bridge Peak at about the first flat area we found a rather miserable guy sitting in the dark and cold low clouds, huddled up against a warratah. His torch had clapped out and rather than get disoriented in the dark he'd done the sensible thing and waited for someone else to come along. But if we hadn't?

"Do you know what, I'm just using one of those Everyready headlamps you can buy at the Red Shed and hypermarche for $25." I have one of those here Its a brilliant headlamp except for the sensitive switch. Only have to look at it from the other side of the table to turn it on. It even has a better colour light than most. Some leds turn everything into black and white.

@geeves "Only have to look at it from the other side of the table to turn it on. " I think that's a new technology called "Over-Reactive" :=) (Don't you just hate gadgets that are smarter than you are?)