Cave Exploring Headlamp List - regularly updated, includes tech specs

Caving is a sport undertaken in complete darkness which requires free use of one's hands; so every cave explorer must use a headlamp. In a cave your ability to see is keeping you alive, and caving involves unimaginable conditions and obstacles - so the headlamp you use must be as durable and reliable as possible. This is my attempt at making and maintaining a comprehensive list of proven, bright, and readily available caving appropriate headlamps. I plan to update and maintian the list as the market continues to move forward. Please feel free to share the list elsewhere.

This is the link to the list (in the form of a Google Documents spreadsheet):
http://goo.gl/n3xhD

The guidelines:

• Proven - to be considered for this list multiple cave explorers must report that they happily and regularly use the model in question as their main light.
• Bright - headlamps producing less than 200 lumens will not be considered.
• Available - only non-generic headlamps with proper model identification which are currently readily available on the English language mail-order market will be considered.

The first version of this list was written in October of 2012 and posted on several small caving forums/groups. By the end of November 2012 it had been shared (by me or others) on more than a dozen websites and online groups. I have already received feedback and corrections from explorers, distributors, and manufacturers from as far away as Croatia, New Zealand, England, and Switzerland. I welcome feedback, suggestions, and corrections! (Replying to this thread should be just as effective as emailing me directly.)

This list is not meant to endorse any one lamp or manufacturer, nor does it claim to contain sufficient information for deciding on the best model for you - it is only intended as a starting point for someone researching the current caving headlamp market.


Know of any I've missed? See any errors? Think of a way it could be (realistically) improved? Find anything confusing? Please let me know!

I do still need help confirming or finding numerous bits of the information:

• pretty much all of the "exposed materials" info (much of it was guess work, especially cables which are all listed as Nylon)
• release dates (where missing or inaccurate)
• beam angle measurements (see below)
• personal accounts of lowest runtime (where missing or inaccurate)

Current plans/ideas for improvement:

• maybe add a F.A.Q. or Info tab containing
  • more detailed description of each column
  • explanation of IP rating system
  • explain my criteria for "readily available", etc.
• hotspot/spill "beam angle" measurements
• "user serviceability" (novice/skilled/master ? or maybe lens, cable, etc. ?)

headlamps made by littlemonkey, lupine and silva should be up on the list..

N10 said:

headlamps made by littlemonkey, lupine and silva should be up on the list..

Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestions, N10!

I've been told that the lovely Rude Nora (Littlemonkey's light, currently unavailable) will be available again soon, so it will definitely be on the list once it comes back on the market. (Sir Lord John Biffington III has a new CustomDuo module on its way too.)

Silva only has two headlamps (from what I can tell) that would meet the brightness requirements - the Sprint (and Sprint Plus), and the slightly fragile looking halogen powered XCL. I had previously concluded that they weren't readily available, but I am now seeing one single UK retailer offering international shipping. I'd love to add the Sprint to the list - first I'll try and confirm that they have been underground without issue. (I've never seen one.)

Lupine seems to have three appropriate models, the Piko, the Betty, and the Wilma. I haven't seen any of those underground either but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be on the list if I can confirm that they've been used for caving.
I'll look into them a bit and with any luck I'll add them soon! :thanks:

Good job. You can add the LedLampe IV from TechTonique
http://www.spelemat.com/ledlampe


Envoyé depuis mon téléphone.

Stef said:

Good job. You can add the LedLampe IV from TechTonique

Click to expand...

Thanks Stef. I already knew of the LedLampe but from what I can determine it is no longer available. The website is from 2009, the direct ordering link doesn't work, none of the retailers they link to list it in stock any more, and we haven't been able to get any response to email inquiries.

Same story for the Viper Light.

Mastrel custom duo

Not yet available but worth keeping an eye on Karstec Astrana

Bummer, the link doesnt work for me.

Matjazz said:

Mastrel custom duo

Not yet available but worth keeping an eye on Karstec Astrana

Click to expand...

That upcoming Karstec lamp looks like it could be cool. The Duo retrofits made by Mastrel were too dim to make the list though.

N10 said:

headlamps made by... lupine and silva should be up on the list..

Click to expand...

I asked around but have not yet found one caver who uses them. The response I got was basically "that's way too much money not to be able to control spot vs flood", and "if I was going to spend $400+ on a lamp I would get a [purpose built caving lamp]". So, I am of the impression that high-end bike lights like those are impractical due to high cost combined with a lack of features that cavers prefer (like very low output modes and the ability to switch between flood and spot). It seems that using bike lights for caving is usually a low-budget option. If I hear otherwise I'll reconsider but for now I'm leaving them off the list until I get some personal (or even second hand) accounts of their use underground.

Mooreshire said:

I asked around but have not yet found one caver who uses them.

Click to expand...

:lolsign: Not thirty seconds after posting that someone replied to one of my inquiries saying they are happy with their Piko and Betty models. Looks like they might make it on after all.

No one considering either the Zebralight or Spark models? I did my first real caving last summer at Lava Bed National Monument, and I'm looking forward to doing more. Also, I can't stand having an external battery pack, and I love the T body design of the Sparks, so a Spark ST6-460nw is tops on my list.

I respectfully disagree with the 200 lumen minimum guideline. IMHO, more important is the maximum output that can be maintained for the duration of a caving trip (without having the change batteries).

As an example, the Zebralight H51 can output 200 lumens, but that's only for 0.9 hours! It can, however, last 8 hours at 30 lumens. The Princeton Tec Corona isn't on the list because it maxes out at 90 lumens... BUT, at 30 lumens (the 5-low setting) it'll last for 14.5 hours. I'd call that more cave-worthy than the Zebralight H51.

When I go caving (surveying) I usually expect to be underground for 10 hours or so. So when I compare headlamps, I compare how many lumens each one will output for *at least* 10 hours. Maximum output is less important.

vtunderground said:

I respectfully disagree with the 200 lumen minimum guideline. IMHO, more important is the maximum output that can be maintained for the duration of a caving trip (without having the change batteries).

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I like that.
Caving is like climbing, bicycling, or skiing or any other well developed, specialized activity for that matter, and those who get seriously into it are prone to a bit of (often deserved) elitism... But we shouldn't let the gulf grow.
All of these sports grew from someone setting an opportunity to try something new or go somewhere they weren't sure about. Peaks that are regularly bagged now before lunch were once carefully conquered with raw nerve and some laid rope.

I've explored a few wild caves that no one has likely found in a century or two, any seasoned spelunker would probably laugh at a few of them of them, the mud and the bother for how small they ultimately ended up being, but it wasn't a sport it was an adventure. I didn't even plan on going caving till I found them.
Hell I did one with a fat candle and an incan mini mag as back up... Didn't want to use up the batteries unnecessarily, two is one right? lol.
For that matter I free climbed a bit getting to some of them, again nothing that a climber would think twice about, but for me it was the limit of what I considered a Reasonable risk.
Anyhow, sport amping/bigger/better/farther/faster aside, there is a hell of a lot of value in fairly humble tools that are reliable and last the duration of an impromptu exploration (hopefully not an adventure ;-) ).

If I was under ground for days on end in caves, mines or sub ways I'd want redundant lights that would run on low levels for far longer than I could survive.
ZL H600, a ZL H52 and a Pak-Lite riding on a lithium 9v would be a good start. -about 200$ for three lights that can all last longer than me without a battery charge.
And with a little tape and maybe shaking some water out and/or washing mud out (I'd just tape it nicely), I'll bet that the chintzy looking Pak-Lite is about as reliable as most and more reliable than some many times its price.

Excellent points, folks. I don't disagree with any of them really, and perhaps some day I'll expand my guidelines and extend the list out to include all sorts of options. For now though, it's hard enough for me to keep track of and try to make sense of this range. I certainly agree with you that runtime is more important than maximum output! Also, redundant lights (at least three sources for each caver!) are super important.

I do want to be as neutral as I can be here, providing just facts about those lights which are currently generally 'suggestible'... but for now this is a list of bright, etc., caving appropriate headlamps - and I'm pretty happy with it that way. In fact I welcome anyone to try and assemble a list of and stats for all the headlamps that get caved with (or whatever criteria you feel would be best) and I'll surely help to contribute, but I fear it'll be a very long list stuffed full of lots of what are now rather less-than-desirable lights.

In my experience, a caver who shows up to a trip with a (comparatively) dim headlamp will have less fun and see fewer amazing details than those with brighter, and ultimately they'll wish they had had a more modern lamp. I don't want this to be a list of lamps which will most likely disappoint someone, and finding that you are stuck with a way dimmer light than everyone else is usually quite disappointing. With all the 600+ lumen headlamps underground now, I do feel 200 lumens is a reasonable minimum to suggest for someone looking to buy themselves a lamp for caving.

There are tons of off-brand options, and dimmer inexpensive mining and hunting lamps for example, and of course I know many cavers who happily and frugally use them. I think it would be quite a feat to wade through such a list and unfortunately few people would be interested in or happy with the majority of such lamps. Also I'd hate to have a hundred entries along the lines of "so you search ebay for 'zoom headlamp 1200 lumens' and you'll find a blue colored light that's truly putting out 560 or so lumens with a flimsy cord that isn't very waterproof but with an actually rather nice beam aside from the blinking modes and it'll probably serve you just fine but if it doesn't then sorry but hey it was only $18".

When I moved from a finicky and flickering carbide lamp flame on my head to a 6-12v incandescent I saw more of each cave I visted and enjoyed myself more, when I transitioned from the dim incan to a 200-or-so lumen LED lamp I saw and enjoyed even more, and recently moving from the 200 lumen models to 700-1000+ lumen lamps... well let's just say that I wouldn't want anyone to have to settle for what I started with.

Let's light up the deep places baby! (Except where the bats are sleeping of course. )

I'm quite vexed by caver's resistance to using hand-held lights. My experience has been that headlamps give me terrible tunnel vision, and make it excruciatingly difficult to read the surface of the cave floor or walls. A hand-held light fixes this problem easily for me. I can see how you need both hand free, but why not simply mount a light on your hand or wrist? When I was getting my intro to caving at Lava Beds, I used my SC50w+ on a wrist lanyard. When I didn't need it, I just tucked it into the sleeve of my shirt and tucked the sleeve under the cuff of my glove. That worked fine for me. Admittedly, I wasn't doing any 'hard-core' caving there, but still, I don't see why something like a hand or wrist mounted light wouldn't be a welcome addition for any caver.

The run-time specs on the Spark 18650 models are very impressive... The ST6-460nw is at the top of my list of lights to get right now. Here's a copy/paste of the specs of the light from Spark's product info page.

Features
LED:CREE XML T5 Neutral White
5 modes
Super: 460lm/1.8hours
Max: 200lm/3.5hours
Med1: 70lm/12hours
Med2: 12lm/120hours
Low: 0.5lm/90days

Battery
One 18650 rechargeable Li battery with range from 3.7V to 4.2V or 2*CR123
Reverse polarity accepted circuit
Electrically conductive aluminum body provides inherent EMI/RFI shielding

SCHOTT ultra clear lens
Polarity reversibility
IPX8 waterproof

Weight
without battery:50g
with battery and headband:150g

Dimension
Length:78mm
Width:52mm

The 70 lumens for 12 hours certainly meets your run-time criterion. Also, I like the t-body design of the Sparks as I find they work a LOT better than Zebras when wearing a hat or hood. The forward projection of the emitter housing results in less blockage of the beam when wearing the light on a hat, or under a hood. While I prefer the UI and the levels available on the Zebras, because of the flush mounted emitter on the side of the light's body, I find my Spark ST5-190nw a better light in certain uses/situations than any of my Zebras.

On the lumen front, I'm somewhat torn.

I certainly see more (both intentionally and accidentally) as a result of building and using brighter caving lights over the last ~9 years, and I like being able to walk into a cave from sunlight without having to take care and let my eyes adjust, but there is also an arms race aspect to things - at least so far, people quite happy with a generation N light I made them fairly quickly started asking about an upgrade to a generation N+1 light when they started finding themselves walking in relative shadows as a result of someone behind them having a newer model.

Having spent a fair amount of time talking to people about lights, people frequently ask about runtimes and maximum lumens, but much less often ask about beamshape or available beam blends.
Maybe some of the latter is down to not having easy means of comparison (how tight is a 'tight spot'?), but to me it still seems strange that someone would ask how many lumens were in a spot beam but not whether it was ~4° or 14°.

Regarding handheld lights, I don't personally get a feeling of tunnel vision from using headlamps, and it's hard to see many movement situations where a handheld or wristmount light would be much use to me - in narrow passages I'd often have hands on the walls, and in non-narrow ones with uneven floors, using a wrist light would seem likely to distract my arm from normal balancing duties. For any vertical work or crawling, my hands are occupied and my forearms aren't pointing in useful directions.

Possibly the only useful scanarios which spring to mind are relatively flat uniform-coloured mud floors, where a light away from the eyes might help show surface variation better, but much of that difficulty of seeing variation seems intensity-dependent - I think that my current light is bright enough in that respect for the colours of floors caves here tend to have, especially with a little hard-edged spot added into the flood.
Possibly black lava tubes are a bit of a special case?

uk_caver said:

On the lumen front, I'm somewhat torn.

I certainly see more (both intentionally and accidentally) as a result of building and using brighter caving lights over the last ~9 years, and I like being able to walk into a cave from sunlight without having to take care and let my eyes adjust, but there is also an arms race aspect to things - at least so far, people quite happy with a generation N light I made them fairly quickly started asking about an upgrade to a generation N+1 light when they started finding themselves walking in relative shadows as a result of someone behind them having a newer model.

Having spent a fair amount of time talking to people about lights, people frequently ask about runtimes and maximum lumens, but much less often ask about beamshape or available beam blends.
Maybe some of the latter is down to not having easy means of comparison (how tight is a 'tight spot'?), but to me it still seems strange that someone would ask how many lumens were in a spot beam but not whether it was ~4° or 14°.

Click to expand...

You and I think very alike! In fact you may have articulated the issue better than I could have. :thumbsup:

Blending of flood and spot brightnesses; diffused, aspheric, or hotspot with spill; they can all be made to work very well or can be implemented poorly... but it certainly has proven difficult to describe and compare those attributes and details that are the most desirable.

Usually I take the easy route out of the discussion and claim that everyone is going to consider a different headlamp "the best" because we all have different needs and preferences.

B0wz3r said:

I can't stand [feature X], and I love [feature Y], so a [certain model] is tops on my list.

Click to expand...

See? It's all about finding the right lamp for you!

B0wz3r said:

I'm quite vexed by caver's resistance to using hand-held lights. My experience has been that headlamps give me terrible tunnel vision, and make it excruciatingly difficult to read the surface of the cave floor or walls. A hand-held light fixes this problem easily for me. I can see how you need both hand free, but why not simply mount a light on your hand or wrist? When I was getting my intro to caving at Lava Beds, I used my SC50w+ on a wrist lanyard. When I didn't need it, I just tucked it into the sleeve of my shirt and tucked the sleeve under the cuff of my glove. That worked fine for me. Admittedly, I wasn't doing any 'hard-core' caving there, but still, I don't see why something like a hand or wrist mounted light wouldn't be a welcome addition for any caver.

Click to expand...

uk_caver said:

Regarding handheld lights, I don't personally get a feeling of tunnel vision from using headlamps, and it's hard to see many movement situations where a handheld or wristmount light would be much use to me - in narrow passages I'd often have hands on the walls, and in non-narrow ones with uneven floors, using a wrist light would seem likely to distract my arm from normal balancing duties. For any vertical work or crawling, my hands are occupied and my forearms aren't pointing in useful directions.

Possibly the only useful scenarios which spring to mind are relatively flat uniform-coloured mud floors, where a light away from the eyes might help show surface variation better, but much of that difficulty of seeing variation seems intensity-dependent - I think that my current light is bright enough in that respect for the colours of floors caves here tend to have, especially with a little hard-edged spot added into the flood.
Possibly black lava tubes are a bit of a special case?

Click to expand...

Lava tubes are indeed dark as hell and it can be especially hard to make out detail when all you've got to work with is glare off some water on a jet black surface - but they are also often prominently very easy walking passage.

Personally I DO know lots of cavers who carry a bright handheld (in their hand, not as a backup in a pack), and my coveralls even have a handy wrist pocket made for a flashlight. I'm always waving my handhelds around in conjunction with my headlamp, or switching to just the handheld for bits at a time. You still need a quality headlamp though. No real resistance observed here, it's just that with the harder tighter caves comprising mainly of climbing and crawling, you've rarely got a hand free (as uk_caver pointed out). I think it could be cool to experiment with affixing lights to other parts of your body like a wrist light (diver style). I've also wondered about a small lightweight light designed to clip onto the strap of your pack, sort of a chest or shoulder light - unfortunately with such alternative mounting locations I fear I'd just blind myself and others even more often than I do now.

I'm totally coming around on the Hi-CRI issue too - better color means more detail, and the lifeless blue diodes I used happily for years just aren't cutting it any more.

---

In other news the list now has the proper stats for the sexy new Stenlight Rebel X7 Premium SuperSport Deluxe Special 3000 Cosworth or whatever they're calling it (touting a 500 lumen turbo mode that thermally steps down to 300) which has a 2.5mAh battery pack and a new jack that may not be compatible with old batteries. Most retailers are still selling the old models for the same price though, so buyers beware - I got most of the stats off of CaveChat and OnRope1 seems to be the only retailer with the new version properly labeled. Stenlight's website is older than dirt!

Also, I'm holding off on the Lupines unless more cavers speak up with personal accounts - they just seem way too... bike light'ish. It might be a can of worms I don't want to open since there are also tons of budget-but-bright bike lights with headband options that get used underground (Magicshine, etc.) and I'm not sure I'm ready to poll people on their use of such lights and collect all the stats. (Lots of biking cavers want to keep costs down between their two hobbies - I've seen a lot of wire ties and dangling handlebar mount switches.)

I always use a hand light (Zebra sc600w or Fenix pd31) when caving. I find it much easier to point the light around with my hand and move my eyes around with only small movements of my head. It's so much easier on my neck. I find it much easier to see my feet and where I am going to place my next step. When my SC600 steps down to medium I put it away and pull out the PD31.

I also like to enter the cave with all my lights on full power after being out in the tropical sun. If I just relied on 100 lumens to light my way I would have to wait 5 minutes for my eyes to adjust.

I do use my hands for climbing the rocks regularly and frequently I am putting the light in my pocket or letting it dangle for a minute when climbing the dangerous stuff.

Mooreshire mentions affixing lights to other parts of your suit and gear. This is something that occurred to me when looking at the extensive runtimes of ZL low levels.
I was wondering if keeping a spare light source on the back of a helmet or "drag bag"/fanny pack or whatnot might make sense in some cases, especially when exploring with others who are not part of the lumens arms race.
An H51 or H502 for instance, left on one of it's lowest levels and facing backwards would show your location easily to someone following behind you as well as show the geography of the immediate area that you are climbing through without them needing to back light you.
In the event of light failure or an injury it could be useful to have a second light already on. In the event of an injured or incapacitated partner they'd already have a lit locator on them that could remain lit for much longer than they would.
I would not rely on the ZL clip or silicone holder for a use like this, more like duct tape, zip ties, Velcro wraps or cord with constrictor knot.