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which caving lamp?

tidza2004

tidza2004

New member
Hi, I am going to be buying a new - main - lamp soon.  I had a Petzl Duo before, which I found to be very good.  But I have just been looking at reviews on the Fenix HP25 (it looks like a similar-type idea - two types of lighting, flood or focussed.  Anyone any suggestions about the Fenix please.  Thanks for your time.  :clap2:
 
I had one for evaluation (currently lent to someone else).

There's various info/opinions on candlepowerforums, including some of mine

As a surface headlight I quite liked it, even as someone who has been using home-made twin beam setups made to work how I wanted them for many years.

The main gripes I had were the wide jump from 4lm to 45lm on the flood beam and the rather small jumps from 45-90 and 90-180 on both beams, the lack of a properly low spot beam level and the unnecessarily long press to turn on, which I thought I'd get used to, but didn't.
The intensity of the lowest spot beam setting effectively rules out having a mix with a flood assisted with relatively little spot, a blend i really like and use most of the time for things like walking. Even max flood+min spot is rather spot-dominated.

White-wall beamshots were not particularly pretty, with various distinct zones in the beams and both beams being hard-edged which meant minor misalignment stood out, but as with most white-wall testing, that was much less of an issue when I used it for real.
Having the hard edge of the lower part of the flood roughly coincide with the rim of my glasses did rather emphasise the edges, but I have got very used to a soft-edged and slightly wider flood so that may be a somewhat personal opinion, and I noticed that rather more when explicitly testing it just after getting hold of it than when I later used it normally without deliberately thinking about it.

For caving use it shares the issues of most surface headtorches, like the difficulty of solid helmet mounting and (as a remote battery pack light) the durability of a relatively thin cable.
Much depends on the kind of caving people do - some kinds are perfectly fine with regular surface headtorches.

I didn't abuse mine significantly - I only got it just before going to Slovenia and it barely rained the month I was there before I lent it to a local, so I'm not even sure it got wet.
 
the answers are going to be very wide as depends on budget.  if petzl duo your budget I would get a second hand one and get an biff insert (others available from different sources)
if more money available I think I would look at something like the rude nora.
if you search this forum you will find a few topics on this issue I am sure somebody will post up links
 
I?ve been using a Fenix HP25 for a short while now, and so far I really like it. I find that I rarely use the flood-beam underground, as the light seems to just dissipate in reasonably-sized passages. I use it only in crawls and for examining stuff such as surveys, where a spot would give too much of a localized beam.

Then again, I?ve always preferred a spot to a flood beam, and in my opinion the 45-L spot is fine in small passages, adequate in large ones; the 90-L spot is a good all-round light; and the 180-L is great for ?spotting? or wandering round large passages. Using rechargeable Duracells the 90-L spot lasts for about 10? hours, the 180-L spot rather more than 4 hours.

I haven?t had the lamp long enough to give a realistic assessment of its robustness in the long term.
 
That looks suspiciously like a cycle lamp with a helmet clip bodged on. If it is, a look on ebay might save a substantial amount provided you can fabricate a clip....
 
These days, a 9 hour maximum trip length is pretty restrictive...
Click to expand...

That's an interesting observation, Rob; I suppose that it depends on what you are doing. With modern rope techniques 'tourist trips' are much quicker than they used to be on ladders, but I guess that if you are pushing in obscure places, or on an expedition somewhere, then maybe you're right.
 
I like to cave with as much light as possible, there's no way I'd consider something that limited me to low light on a trip, which this does.
 
And also, a recent flooding incident during a "short digging trip" has reminded me that trips can end up lasting much longer than anticipated. Having a super low setting that lasts for days is very useful.
 
It's advertised in Descent.  Very cheap for the specs.  9 hours is a long time and a spare battery is only ?30.
I think it's a cracking buy, just wondering how big it is on the helmet, it looks quite large to me.
 
droid said:
That looks suspiciously like a cycle lamp with a helmet clip bodged on. If it is, a look on ebay might save a substantial amount provided you can fabricate a clip....
Click to expand...

Yep, I would second that.
 
What have we moved on to then Bottlebank? (In that price bracket)

A second hand Duo and and a Custom Duo inset will cost about what the Earthworm does. It'll give you 150lm for 8.3 hours or 85lm for 14.5 hours (or even dimmer settings for longer). This is with good quality 2900mAh nimhs. If you don't charge them immediately before the trip then you could easily lose 20% off those times due to battery self discharge.

There are plenty of people who post on here that are happy with that. Is the problem the lack of a lower power mode or that not enough light is emitted?
 
I'd suggest that the greater problem with the Earthworm is, as blackholesun suggests, the lack of a proper low power mode. Based on my current experience, 200lm could easily be considered too much for many situations when actively moving through a cave, let alone when waiting/prussiking/survey-reading etc.

As has been said before, a lamp not capable of dimming below 200lm smacks of a converted cycle lamp...

As regards run times, I'd suggest whilst 9 hours is probably sufficient for most uses, there are plenty of times when you'd want a lot longer than that. Granted, you could spend an extra ?30 on another battery to give you another 9 hours, but I'd suggest the lower cost, easier transported option of a handful of AA's gives you much more flexibility. You can also steal them from a photographer's flashes if you run out, or lose patience with him. Personally I moved on to a 7.8Ah 3.7v pack with AAs as a back-up to get the extended runtime. Coupled with a CustomDuo converted Oldham headset this more than happily covered me for a weekend in Daren Cilau without worrying about switching to low beam all the time. Didn't even touch the spares.

As far as the OP's question, I've seen (but not used) both underground with neither causing much in the way of complaint. Neither's the brightest lamp on the block, but so long as you're caving with someone considerate enough to match light outputs (and presumably therefore not sporting an Earthworm) you'll have no problems. The standard Duo's halogen spot is pants though - if you prefer a spotty beam I guess you'd be happier with the HP25.
 
I agree that it does appear overpriced. None of the Fenix lights match it though - The HP11 gets 133lm for 9:30 and I think that's the closest one. They do have more useful modes though.

I don't think it's much of a simplification to say that most modern caving lights use LED's with similar efficiencies. This means that the total number of photons that can be emitted per charge is determined by whether the battery technology is NiMH (AAs) or Li-ion and how many cells there are. This gives 4 main options

2 AAs (Pixa etc)
Dim, and tend to have no rear battery pack making them small but front heavy

4 AAs (Duo, HP11 etc)
Reasonable amounts of light for a reasonable price

2 Li-ions (Rude Nora, Earthworm etc)
Expensive and bright, but don't give as much light for as long as the next class

4 Li-ions (Scurion etc)
Expensive, loads of light for ages, but even heavier than the last class

I think the novelty for the Earthworm is that it's apparently designed for caving (dubious), from the third class and thus brighter, but not priced much more than the second class.

In reply to the OP, the Fenix looks like a reasonable choice, though isn't completely waterproof at IPX6. If I were to get it, I'd avoid diving sumps with it, make sure to open it and let it dry soon after every trip and would buy some decent AAs for it (I use the 2900mAh from 7dayshop).
 
The Fenix HP30 looks the best bet to me, for the extra ?20 or so, unless there's a problem with them.

I've not used a Fenix, but have caved with people who do and for the price they seem OK.

 
Oh, yes, the HP30 does appear to be decent. Must have missed that model when browsing.

It claims 200lm for 12 hours at ?75, with other modes, so I guess the Earthworm isn't as novel as I thought and is likely to be an inferior product to the HP30.

Perhaps most of us will be using Li-ions in a few years time now that the cost of a 2 cell Li-ion headlamp is so close to that of a 4AA headlamp, but has about twice the battery capacity. (I guess my comment below may have been apt 2-3 years ago but now is behind the times)

While trying to update myself, I came across the ZebraLight H600W MKII. It claims 150lm for 11 hours - bright enough and long enough for most UK tourist trips - from a single 18650 cell. It may be of interest to anyone after an extremely small (10cm long by 2.5 cm round) and light (77g plus battery) headlamp.
 
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