Can you help?

Hello all, my name is Roger and Ive been a lurker here for about a year off and on. I was hoping for some help on headlamp selection. Ive done so much reading that Im now suffering from information overload (not to mention I think my eyes are bleeding). I found this forum in my original search for headlamps about a year ago, thats when you turned me on to the river rock k2 from Target. Sadly thats about the time peoples heads were catching on fire and were being discontinued. So I went to all the Target stores around me and bought out all of their stock (yes I thought it was a great headlamp).

Now you may be wondering why I need so many freakin headlamps, so heres a little background. I own a restaurant exhaust cleaning company. We clean the exhaust systems when the restaurants are closed which 98% of the time is at night. We use pressure washers that produce over 3000 psi and heat the water upwards of 200 degrees. The river rock worked good, it withstood the moisture, the grease, was able to penetrate the steam cloud with its tight beam (very important), and held up to employee abuse. The part of the river rock that eventually failed though is the battery compartment clips. This is the part that seems to fail on most headlamps Ive bought. These lights are used 6-8 hours a night, 5 nights a week so we go through a good number of batteries. I thought I found the answer with the zebra light. Bright, built like a traditional flashlight, out of metal (durable), twist on cap for batteries (no clips to break), light weight. Sadly I didnt read carefully enough, the first time I used it all it did was light up the entire steam cloud which makes it absolutly worthless. I wish they would come out with a spot version, for me, I think it would fit the bill perfectly.

So, I was hoping I could get some suggestions. Price isnt really an issue though I would rather outfit 6 employees with $25 headlamps than $300 headlamps. Here is a list of what a perfect headlamp would be for me, is there anything out there that comes close?

1. Tight beam to penetrate the steam
2. Very bright
3. Durable to hold up to harsh environment and employee abuse
4. Preferably take AA (36 packs of batteries are cheap)
5. Light weight
6. No plastic battery compartment clips

Thanks for taking the time to read this and for any help you may offer.

Either wait for the new reflector versions of zebralight which are meant to come out in two month or buy Caving headlamps.
Those Caving lamps are quite pricy but there should be some which suit your needs.

You might want to get a headlamp which is able to use rechargeables to cut the price for batteries a bit. Zebralights all take LiIon rechargables and most caving headlamps can be fitted with rechargeables too.

Shorty66 said:

Either wait for the new reflector versions of zebralight which are meant to come out in two month or buy Caving headlamps.....

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Any idea when those are to come out, and what the specs might be?

Shorty66 said:

Either wait for the new reflector versions of zebralight which are meant to come out in two month or buy Caving headlamps.
Those Caving lamps are quite pricy but there should be some which suit your needs.

You might want to get a headlamp which is able to use rechargeables to cut the price for batteries a bit. Zebralights all take LiIon rechargables and most caving headlamps can be fitted with rechargeables too.

Click to expand...

You might think that rechargeable would be better in my situation but its inevitable (and happens often) that the batteries go dead and no freshly charged ones are on the truck. Thanks though.

See this thread: https://www.candlepowerforums.com/threads/244433

Thats all we got till now.

I don't know of any headlamps with a tight beam. I highly suspect the future zebraligth reflector headlamps to be quite floody (but not as floody as their current lineup).

You could expand your options a bit when looking at the nitecore headband:
http://www.4sevens.com/product_info.php?cPath=93_97&products_id=1862
Finding a robust AA or 2*AA light with at tight beam that fits nicely into this headband should be pretty straightforward. There are several similar products available (fenix headband, nite-ize headband), but the nitecore is probably the best (unverified, but qualified guess).

In steam(fog), using "warm" or "neutral" white light (as opposed to the "bluish" white light typical of LED's) may be a bit of an advantage. The merits are debated, but it appears that most of the time and for most people, avoiding "bluish" (cold white) and using a very tight beam is beneficial. This was discussed quite recently on CPF:
What is the best flashlight in fog?
You could test this out for $20 with the warm white Romisen from shiningbeam. There are several threads on this light in the LED section. Quite throwy for its size. You could probably also reduce the "spill" part of the light (which blinds you in fog) by adding a sleeve made of black cardboard or a plastic tube.


Oh, and rechargeable is the way to go for your use. Lots of different chemistries and sizes to select from. I can't really speak of other chemistry than nimh, but there is no way around the fact that li-ion rechargeables has the best performance. The simplicity of low self discharge nimh AA batteries is appealing, though... so I always recommend sanoy eneloop nimh batteries, which is simple, robust and you have the opportunity to chug in some plain AA alkalines if you mess up your charging routines.

If you have problems whtih rechargables, just buy as many as you bought normal batteries for one eavening of cleaning or some more and have them all charged when your job is done.
I dont see any reason why you should have problems having rechargables in your truck if you don`t forget the batteries today.

And Jankj is right - a really tight hotspot on a headlamp is seldom. But you might just mod your headlamps with adequate asph. lenses - that would give you an absolutly tight beam. See the modders section for lens sources.

Thanks guys, youve given me a lot to look into and have been a tremendous help.

any lead on where to find these concentrate aspheric lenses? any high quality vendors CPFs recommended here?

The Remington 4xAA RMHL4AA-B has a piercing focused hot spot that can really reach across a field. Perhaps unfortunately for your use it also has a fair amount of side spill, but the central beam is really punchy, maybe garnering up to 75% of the output.

There are a couple of reviews in headlamps if you search for the model#. There were some good beam shots, but unfortunately the picture links are now dead.

You can find the headlamp online, at some Lowes (though not mine) and at Batteries Plus (about $20 overpriced so check return policy if you've got one local and want to test a unit).

+1 on NiMH rechargeables. Here's a CHART of which work best. Get as many of the 8 cells chargers as you need to keep up.

AHorton appears to have a few extra aspheric lenses, though only in one size.

Good luck!