Spelunking Your Books: Using the LED headlamp as a reading light
Inspired by a fellow visually-impaired photographer on Flickr ([...]), I went to my local outdoors store and bought this LED headlamp, the Tikka Plus, from Petzl. The headlamp is great for reading! I have been using booklights to supplement ambient room lighting for a while now, but have never been satisfied. My eyesight forces me to hold the book quite close, so these booklights are often obstructed by my own forehead. While the headlamp is not perfect, it is a significant advance in convenience and quality.

Personally, I would prefer a more diffuse light and one with more low intensity options. The light is designed to throw a wide beam outdoors or in caves, so the light hitting a page a few inches a way works more like a spotlight. I will experiment with some ways to diffuse the light a bit, possible some opaque paper, bu tI already look geeky enough with it on.

Hopefully, someone will come out with a headlamp designed specifically for the visually impaired, or at least for home honnyists whose need for close up lighting is similar.

love this petzel
this could be the best piece of hiking gear that I own. Used it recently on 3 day hike through Dolly Sods and had no problems. Great Battery life, very compact and low profile. I cannot recommend this enough. I love this thing

works fine
I purchased this to read my Kindle at night and for doing odd jobs around the house. The device works well and as designed.

Petzl headlamp
I do night photography of insects, and these lights are light, durable, and generally wonderful.

great headlamp
so far, seems to be a great headlamp. has good range, was very convenient on a recent camping trip, for which i purchased this model and also a 2-LED model (also petzl) for my seven year old. i have not had one of these before, so i cannot compare it to others, but both seemed to be just what i was looking for. will be eager to see how long the batteries and lights last. one feature that i did notice on some other headlamps that this does not have is a warning light for when the batteries are getting low. not sure if this is a key feature or not - i guess it will depend on when my batteries die!