Revised 12/4/2011

Your lamp is without any doubt the singular most important piece of kit that you will acquire for venturing underground. The problem is that there are probably more different caving and mining caplamps available than ever, someone commented a short while ago that they went underground in a party of about 20 people and everyone had a different lamp.

 The purpose of this page is to help a prospective buyer in their choice, and what is said here applies whether or not you decide to purchase one of my lamps, or one from elsewhere.

 The most basic choice is whether or not to follow the new trend and purchase LED lighting, or whether to stick with the traditional bulb. There is little doubt that bulbs are on the way out, let us just compare say the Oldham miners caplamp with my XML range.

 The Oldham bulb caplamp has a heavy lead acid battery rated at 4 volts and worn around ones waist; it’s in the region of about 5 lbs weight and quite a thing. The caplamp is a reasonably light affair made from plastic, its standard bulb outputs about 48 lumens at one amp in the form of a fairly tight beam. The measure of power consumption is the Watt and arrived at by multiplying the voltage by the amperage, so your standard Oldham lamp is rated at 4 watts.

 My XML range of lamps can output upwards of 165 lumens for a draw of about 1.6 watts on the battery.

 One point which the traditionalist always makes is that of reliability, it is true that I have been underground years ago with my headset half full of water but the lamp continued to shine. It is also true that I have struck my helmet on the roof and had my bulb go due to broken filament, something that cannot happen with an LED.

 The Oldham lead acid battery is quite sturdy but can be prone to corrosion inside the lid that can cause the lamp to fail.

 LED lighting becomes therefore the logical solution. But the question remains “What lamp would suit me best”?

 Mining Lamps

 These constitute by far the greatest number of caplamps being sold worldwide and include such lamps as the Oldham DL16, the Raptor Pro, Gokang, Halo, TJL etc. By mining lamps I mean lamps designed specifically for use by working miners and to conform with the safety standards pertinent to this.

One thing that they all have in common is that the LED lamp is a side emitting diode placed in a special reflector so as to produce a very narrow beam.

The output in lumens is usually quite low, about 75 lumens, but due to the concentration of the light and narrowness of the beam they have a very high lux to lumen ratio. In practical terms this means that they are capable of quite good distance vision but only for a small area. This effect would be most noticeable in say large slate chambers and similar surroundings.

Also, these lamps are designed to conform to safety standards in particular use in coal mines, issues that do not affect recreational exploring or caving but are often reflected in the cost.

Regardless of this, many people use these for recreational mine exploration and caving and consider them suitable for their needs.

 Caving Lamps

 By this I mean lamps designed for recreational activities which include the recreational exploration of abandoned mine workings.

These include of course my lamps together with the Stenlight, Scurion, Viper, Petzl, Little Monkey, Speleo Technics and probably a few more, together with Oldham conversion kits such as the Retro 2, Bisun, and CustomDUO.

 Of these, the Stenlight has probably outsold all of the others due to its reasonable cost, light weight, and reasonably high output. However its reputation has been marred slightly by its somewhat flimsy cable and plug. (The manufacturers are now addressing this a new model is imminent)

The Scurion is a very well designed lamp, somewhat larger than the Stenlight its body is ideally designed for heat dissipation; indeed the manufacturers take advantage of this to produce a version with an output of 1450 lumens! Its biggest drawback however is its price with the top model being over £600 which puts it outside most people’s pockets. There have also been some issues with the battery cases.

The Viper is newcomer on the block and looks a good lamp, a bit pricey as well being nearly £400, also spare batteries are horrifically expensive.

 This is just a very rough guide and if misleading in any way I apologise to the manufacturer concerned, also of course are ones I omit, but this paper is mainly about choosing a type of lamp rather than a specific.

 Lamp designs

 This can be narrowed down easily to lamp type and battery type.

 There are two schools of thought on lamp type, the ‘beam man’ and the ‘area light’ man for want of a better description. Many people prefer the throw or distance vision of a well defined beam providing peripheral illumination is adequate. Others, mainly the caving fraternity take the opposite view. This is quite understandable. Imagine thrutching about it a tight wet system with plenty of calcite formations to throw the light back at you with a lamp that produces a tight beam of intense light. The Scurion addresses this problem neatly by the fact that their lamps all have 2 emitters, one as a bare emitter, and the other behind a reflector with the ability of the user to vary the degree of each according to personal taste.

In considering this we have to return to the argument concerning lux and lumens. This can best be illustrated by example.

 Suppose a lamp has a very tight narrow beam that enables good vision up to say 50 metres, and yet the lamp only produces 75 lumens.

If the beam is too tight for a user and they want a broader beam then in order to maintain the distance vision we would need to double the output to say 150 lumens. This is not rocket science.

 Battery choice is very much as personal thing with some preferring the helmet mount type that balances nicely the weight of the caplamp and has no trailing wires to get caught on anything. Those that prefer the belt mount type generally express fear of their helmet dropping down a winze or sump and loosing their light.

 A further consideration is the so called “super lamps”. These are lamps with very high output, as lamps get more powerful generally, then the argument will of course become more conjectural.

 I personally would now put only a small number of lamps into this category, my Trigon and MagnumStar, the upper Scurion range, and the Viper. There is a possible new one from Speleo Technics but I find the output they quote confusing.

 As a rough guide 1200 lumens is about the output of a car headlamp on main beam. These lamps are very powerful and really come into their own in the larger slate mines.

 My Lamps

 Workstar Pro

 A lamp for the ‘beam man’. The spot is very powerful with an excellent throw very similar to the Fenix TK11 tactical torch on non turbo mode. Very good value for money.

 EcoStar XML

This lamp gives choice of either a bare emitter giving area illumination highly suitable for tight cave systems, or a very wide beam. Distance vision is assured by its very high lumen output of over 520 lumens.

 Neither of the above have any external heatsinking and therefore weigh no more than the standard Oldham caplamp upon which they are built.

 My Superlamps

 Trigon XML

 This is very versatile, its external heatsinks and thermodynamic heat conductor system puts the weight up to about 300 grams, however this is not really noticeable. Lighting choices are twin LEDs at 165, 560, or 1600  lumens as a broad beam, or a bare emitter at 920 lumens. There is also an emergency light capable of getting you out of anywhere.

 MagnumStar XML

 Without much doubt the most powerful caplamp available to purchase in the world, it has a maximum output of about 3200 lumens.