Looking for light/lantern for the tent

Hello,

I'm looking for a lantern oder LED-Lamp to use in our tent. I don't need a big throw. It should be lightweighted and have good battery life. I think about Inova 24/7. Is it a good choice?

Bye

welcome to cpf Merowin,

lot's of led lights will work for your requirement. Infinity ultra, ARC AA or AAA works great!

what I use is an ARC AAA with clip permently attached to tent. ARC AAA gets rolled up with tent and forgotten.

so if you do this be sure and use a good brand batt that doesn't leak.

Hey Merowin,

Welcome to CPF, and why dontcha stay awhile!

The 24/7 is a great all around light, especially in the car. I think it's a bit more hi-tech than you need in a tent. I use a CMG Ultra on a short lanyard hung from the middle of the tent. Inexpensive, bullet- and fool-proof, great runtime and uses easy to find, cheap batteries.

cy's choice of an Arc AAA is great, too, but Arcs are hard to find and pricey these days. For more diffuse light, you can use one of WitsEnd's battery powered lightsticks, they run on three v76 batteries.

CMG also makes the Bonfire Blaze, which is intended to be used as a tent light, but for thirty bucks, you could have an Infinity Ultra with cash for a whole bunch of batteries! Note that since Gerber took over CMG, there have been complaints on the new Infinity Ultra, but YMMV.

And check out these previous camping threads (found using the search function):

camping thread1

camping thread2

camping thread3

camping thread4

And there are more going back further.

Welcome again!
daloosh

If you could get your hands on an Energizer led lantern, that'd be nice. Exceptionally long runtime. Has two brightnesses, a swinging door kind of setup to aim the light when hanging vs standing on a table, etc. It has a built in hook at the bottom for hanging. Also runs on nimhs for a long time. IIRC, it draws around 100ma or so on high, so it would run 20+ hours on rechargeables and 25+ on alks.

http://www.batteries.com/productprofile.asp?appid=315673&cmp=KAC-ShoppingCom

You could also buy a rayovacs kid lantern... or any other small 4AA krypton lantern and mod it with a few LEDs and a dropping resistor.

GloToobs!!!

Another thought.... a 4AA touchlight modded with LEDs that can be hung from a tent pole would be nice also. I have one in my bathroom that lights up everything and has a timer on it that shuts off automatically.

I got this light from a local camping store last week on special for $16 Australian, I disassembled it (as curious minds do) and proceeded to paint the whole inside of the plastic cover with blue glow paint.

Now I only need to turn the light on for about a minute or two and the reflector still reflects the luminescense enough to easily see by all night long, especially in the tent.

If it's too bright to sleep with, shut your eyes! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif


Saves a lot of battery time too.

would the Eternalight be good for this?

An Eternalight would be EXCELLENT for a tent light.
I isnt quiet as floody as you would want, but very close.

You have multiple light levels to get just what you want, and some even have a sleep mode !!! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
You can fall asleep with the light on, and not have to worry about it staying on the dieing.
Actually, you could put it on one of the lower settings for days or weeks straight !

Either an EternaLight, a Glo-Toob, or a Krill would make a nice tent night-light. The EternaLight has more versatility and levels, but either the Glo-Toob on constant or the Krill would offer nice soft, low illumination so as not to wake the kids.

Cheapest and easiest I can think of is the Energizer 2-LED folding lantern, mentioned earlier. Last I checked, it was $3.29 at Office Depot stores. They use 4AA batteries and last (according to the package) 100 hours on high, or 200 hours on low power.
They have a folding hook and hole you could thread paracord or similar string through to hang them, and fold for a series of possible configurations.

You already have a lot of good suggestions for a tent light. The Dorcy 1 x AAA would also work well and is only about $6 at Walmart. Are you buying in the US or somewhere else? If you are in Europe or wherever, your choices might be somewhat different.

The only other thing I would mention is that a tent light is good when you need lighting for several people, such as when playing a card game. But most of the time, a headlamp is a better choice for personal use in a tent or for other general camping needs. A headlamp can usually be converted into a tent light as well. So I would recommend a Petzl Tikka Plus or a Princeton Tec Eos.

Hello,

thanks for your answers!
What do You think about the UK 4AA eLED? Long runtime, but what's the flood of this flashlight. Enough fort he tetnt and the campsite?

I haven't had one of the UK 4AA LED lights but I bet with some ingenuity you can make it into a lantern by using something like a white plastic paint can lid or something over the head of the light.

I'm sorry, I linked to a picture but I think it was removed.

It's basically a coleman tent light which is held in place with a magnet placed under the spray cover of your tent but on the outside of the tent part if you get me.

The magnet on the outside (but still protected from rain etc) holds the light to the inside of the tent roof.

It's a xenon globe in this 4 x AA light with a flat reflector and a domed opaque cover to disperse the light evenly.

I painted this cover on the inside with glowpaint so now I don't have to worry about runtime, just switch the light on for a few minutes and then you can switch it off and have this awesome glow - more than enough to see by!! Saves you batteries too! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Greetings Merowin,

I hang a AA Minimag with a Opelec Newbeam LED module and a white diffuser cone.

Kelly

Hi all,

what do You think about the new Petzl Myo XP headlamp? http://www.petzl.com/petzl/LampesNews?MotRecherche=Quick+Search&Langue=en&Gamme=&Critere=&News=99