caving light

[machine23]

i know petzl is a good brand, but if u have ever seen the movie "the cave", they use these hand or wrist mounted lights. im not sure if they are LED, but i want a light like that. if anyone knows where i could find one like that plz let me know. also, does anyone in this forum know anything about hawver cave?

[Squirrel Girl]

It's been a while since I watched "The Cave," but as I recall, a lot of what they did was done for "Hollywood" and didn't have much to do with real caving. I don't know any caver that actually uses a wrist mounted light, as their hands are usually occupied with activities such as crawling, climbing, surveying, etc, and so they aren't available to be pointing a light in the direction the caver's eyes are looking. So I'm not familiar with any lights such as this being available.

You should be able to sew up a strap of some sort with some wide (1"?) elastic to hold a mini-mag or something. You'd have to be careful to not have the light slip out. Maybe you can use a split ring at the back of the mini-mag and have it clip in to a ring on the strap.

The other problem I foresee is that the moment a person flexes their hands back just a little, it's gonna block the light beam.

You know the other night I watched the DVD of "I, Robot" and I noticed in it, Will Smith held a big Mag Light up by his face in that same peculiar manner they do in the Hollywood cave movies. What's the deal with movies? I've never seen anyone in real live hold flashlights like that.

[wendy]

In the movie The Cave, they were using their cave diving lights when they were out of the water. There is a battery canister that is hip mounted, a cord and then a strap to fit around the hand, so the light is on top of the hand. They come in 10 watt to maybe 21 watt HID now. Companies such as dive-rite, halcyon, and Salvo make the lights, however I would not recommend them for 'dry' caving use. The bulbs can get very hot, they are designed to be used under water. Also the test tube that covers the bulbs is fragile, and very expensive to replace. The lights cost from $400 as a minimum price, but most are more expensive than that. Remember that The Cave was a Hollywood creation, not everythign they did is practical in the real world, it was done for entertainment purposes.

[DeWayne]

What Wendy said.

The lights use HID (High Intensity Discharge) bulbs, which are both expensive and somewhat fragile (a 10W HID bulb can easily set you back $100 or more.) The newest craze has been the 35W HID's, which put out a lot of light along with a bunch of heat (not to mention they suck the juice right out of a battery); burn these bad boys out of the water and you will see the plastic bulb slugs begin to show signs of melting. Wendy hit the extreme low range pricewise; a decent 10W these days with enough battery for a couple of hours of burntime will run upwards of $400 new (it is even getting harder to find used lights for less than $300 these days.) The 21-24W lights start at around $1200 and go up depending upon battery size and chemistry. These are great for underwater (where the water acts as an additional heat sink and run times are considerably shorter due to the breathing gas part of the equation) but they pretty much suck for any other uses.