I cannot tell you how many LED camp lights I have that have broken or batteries that have failed, including LED Lenser which apparently are a quality brand. Randomly I've been lucky and some have lasted a long time, but that's been rare.
In fact, that fire hazard thing makes candles more likely to be the cause of rather than the solution to any serious problems I might face.
Use a candle lantern [1] makes the candle quite hands free and much safer, they're invaluable. They also sell a citronella candle so it can double for keeping the bugs away as well as lighting.
There's no way I'm skipping on the candles for any reason at all. Of course I have LED head torches but not having candles seems kind of silly, I just have both.
I go cave exploring and camping all the time so I have to rely on flashlights and lanterns and to be honest, I've never had one fail in the past 10 years. I've never had a battery fail on me either -- sure, forgetting to charge is one thing but you can carry multiple batteries.
> I go cave exploring and camping all the time so I have to rely on flashlights and lanterns
Which means you both regularly test/use the flashlights, and have an overall maintenance discipline around them that's so habituated that you're probably not consciously aware of it. For most people, a flashlight would be something that you may have one or two of, stored in a drawer somewhere... maybe, since last you saw one of them was 2 years ago. Batteries are probably long dead already, and you might not have spares.
Candles win by price and maintenance simplicity. They are cheap enough that you may have dozens of them (some for emergency in your emergency pack, some for romantic evening in the kitchen, a few buried in random drawers around the house, a few more for... what follows the romantic evening, etc.), and when you find some, they're pretty much guaranteed to work. As a bonus, candles come with a clear, visual indicator of remaining "charge" - something most flashlights don't have.
IDK, if you asked me out for a LED-light dinner, with the eating place brightly lit by cold LEDs... I'd consider proposing to you, regardless of any other preference I may have for a partner.
Seriously, I hate warm lights. They're gloomy and make me spend 90% of my energy fighting to stay awake. I don't get why people are so fond of them (and why they're always keeping their places way underlit). I must be just wired differently.
You're going out on a trip and planning to bring charged batteries. When comparing against candles for emergency purposes, you have to adjust for the fact that emergencies are unplanned. Batteries lose charge over time (especially the rechargeable ones we use), which makes them much less useful for emergencies. Compare with candles, which do not lose 'charge' over time.
I've never had a battery fail on me either -- sure, forgetting to charge is one thing but you can carry multiple batteries.
How do we reconcile our differences here? :) It's just something that has happened to me.
I also do a lot of camping in sub zero temperatures, lithium ion is pretty hopeless when it gets cold. Lot of managing the batteries, keeping them in your clothes etc.
> I cannot tell you how many LED camp lights I have that have broken or batteries that have failed, including LED Lenser which apparently are a quality brand. Randomly I've been lucky and some have lasted a long time, but that's been rare.
Curious.
For me the number of failures has been "zero" regardless of make, model, or shop.
Matches, on the other hand, have often failed to light when struck, or snapped, or gone out before reaching a (decorative, indoor) candle.
Likewise when using lighters for camp fires or barbecues, even with assistance from lighter fluid it takes a lot of goes and the ignition source often fails and a replacement has to be found.
> What brand of lanterns do you use?
Lantern? As in for fire, not an alternative name for a torch? If so, I don't use them.
If that does mean torch, then I barely notice the brands; some are the ones built into seemingly every USB battery, some are from EuroShop[0] (the second because the first they sold me was too bright), there's a bike light I bought a decade ago but have not taken out of storage in the last 5 years since moving country and that thing is brighter than some room main lights, there's a USB powered camping LED somewhere shaped like a normal lightbulb that I got from I don't remember where, but I don't know if I brought it with me or left it in the UK because it was too cheap to care.
I used to use the EuroShop lights as bedside lights because of the way the bedroom is wired, but now there's a Home Pod and smart bulbs I don't even need that.
None of them failed, ever.
Batteries have been drained, but have always been predictable in that regard and are rechargeable, and longer lasting, and vastly brighter, per unit of mass/volume than candles.
So weird, I've had a ridiculous number of failures. I been through two Lezyne bike lights, which I cannot believe. I really thought they'd be buy for life type items, but one just stopped charging after only about a year. Another one didn't really work at all.
Maye I'm emitting some electromagnetic energy that damages the circuit boards? ha
I cannot tell you how many LED camp lights I have that have broken or batteries that have failed, including LED Lenser which apparently are a quality brand. Randomly I've been lucky and some have lasted a long time, but that's been rare.
In fact, that fire hazard thing makes candles more likely to be the cause of rather than the solution to any serious problems I might face.
Use a candle lantern [1] makes the candle quite hands free and much safer, they're invaluable. They also sell a citronella candle so it can double for keeping the bugs away as well as lighting.
There's no way I'm skipping on the candles for any reason at all. Of course I have LED head torches but not having candles seems kind of silly, I just have both.
What brand of lanterns do you use?
[1] https://www.amazon.com/UCO-Original-Lantern-Candles-Storage/...