I think my Olight M30 that I take backpacking is pushing it as far as weight goes, and it is only maybe 10 oz with batteries for 700 lumens. I know a lot of you try to go lightweight and probably don’t take much more than a simple Petzl, but I repeatedly have customers tell me that they want to buy lights to replace the 3-4 D cell Maglites that they take camping and backpacking. One guy the other day said that he takes THREE of them. That has to be close to ten pounds in lights and batteries.
Obviously, I am a little biased and think that 10 oz isn’t so bad for a metric crap ton of light, but I am wondering what other people think. Is the 2-3 oz that you can get a decent headlamp down to as much as you will take? When would you want more than that? Are there any environments or parts of the world where you would want more light than others? I think that any area where there are large predatory mammals would probably make me keep on taking something with a lot of light. The light might not do anything to scare away the animal, but I would at least know what was out there when I hear something crashing through the woods.
Discuss in the comments or on the forums.