In this article, we will be looking at the various types of camping lights that are available today. We will discuss the pros and cons of the various types in an attempt to help you through a process of elimination, find the right type for your camping adventures. I guess you could say we are attempting to "shed some light" on the decision. (Pun intended!).

When you break it right down, there are basically two types of lights - those powered by liquid fuels and those powered by electricity. This is one of the first things you need to decide. Lights that are considered liquid fuel type include:

• LPG lanterns
• Paraffin lanterns
• Gasoline lanterns
• Kerosene lanterns
• Propane lanterns

Lights that are considered electrical include:

• LED lanterns
• Florescent lanterns
• Incandescent lanterns

Many campers choose electrical powered lights over liquid gas if they are camping with children, as they are battery powered and pose much less of a risk of injury or fire. Over the years, there have been many instances of fires started by camping lights, so battery powered lights make a nice, safe alternative to fuel based lights.

Battery powered lights (until the introduction of LED lighting) has generally been considered inferior to liquid fuel lighting due to the fact that battery lights did not tend to last light before the batteries ran out of energy. LED lighting however has changed this as they are extremely energy efficient. It is not uncommon to find some models that can provide a good amount of light for as much as 100 hours on a single full set of batteries. This is a big change over the old style of electrical based lighting.

Where very strong lighting is a must, there is yet to be (as of the time of writing this article) an LED light that would rival the light that can be provided by an LPG lantern, however for most applications the light given out by an LED lantern is more than efficient.

It is always recommended, whichever type you choose, to have a spare handheld style battery (or even wind-up powered) torch. It is good to have something like this in an emergency. Just remember where you keep it so it is within handy reach should your main light source stop working for any reason.

We hope this article has helped you to make the basic decision between liquid fuel based lighting and electrical based lighting. We have looked at breaking it down into the two most basic types of camping lights. Whilst both types have their application, the LED lantern has really come into it's own in the last few years and becoming more and more popular with campers.