It depends on what type of light you want!
Personally, I wouldn't use gas or paraffin/petrol lamps inside a tent. So that leaves mains or battery lights.
Assuming you don't always have a hookup,then battery it is (for mains, we just use an IP66 bulkhead lamp, with a 100W bulb in it - around £7 from Screwfix).
The Coleman Nightstar battery light is well thought of - uses standard D-cells (ie Duracell) but you may well be able to use it with rechargeable NiMH/NiCad batteries) - it's around £25-30.
In the rechargeable camp - there's loads on ebay - never used any of them, so can't comment on the quality, but you can get them cheap on occasion. We use two rechargeable lanterns - the first is a B&Q lantern. I think it's primarily for car use, but it's fine in a tent - two 6W tubes, a charge lasts around 4hours or so (if both tubes used - 8 hours on just one). It also has a torch and a totally useless flashing red light (could be useful if you get caught in the loos without any toilet roll in the middle of the night I suppose :) ). It was £15 a few months ago - I assume they are still available. One issue though is it's not capable of being charged in the car (a bit silly really for a light designed for car use - but there you go), as it requires 6V DC input for charging, not 12V, but for the money it's good value IMO. CPC do 6V car chargers for a few quid though!
The second is a Leopard lantern I've had for years. It's been bulletproof for me (watch loads of people post in saying it's crap :) ). It's still available from Argos for £30, and in it's newer guise can be recharged in the car. It's green, and looks like .....a lantern. Has a torch in the base, covered by a big orange protection disc (so you can flash an orange light if you wish :) ). Uses an 8W U tube - charge lasts about 5 hours. Maybe it's sentiment, but I like this one - tough as old boots, and in what must be about 15years, I've put one new battery in it (cost me £6 from CPC) - and one torch bulb - it's still on the original U tube (which seems as bright as it was when new).
Neither will light up your tent like your living room though!
We've also got a large rechargeable light from CPC - uses 2x 18W tubes, on a 4Ah battery. Lasts about 1.5 hours on two tubes - 3 hours on one. Sadly, can't be charged from the car though (hmmm, a modification required I think). Rather than try and describe it - it's here
http://custom1.farnell.com/cpc/product.asp?catalog%5Fname=cpc+catalogue&category%5Fname=&product%5Fid=262539
This does a much better job of lighting up the whole tent - but the run time is a bit crap though.
CPC also do a range of rechargeable, more conventional looking lanterns - just do a search on "rechargeable lanterns".
If it's for use outside the tent - only one way to go IMO, a parrafin/petrol lamp.
I'm still using my old fishing Anchor parrafin lamp - it must be 20yrs old now - but nothing else comes close. Makes gas lamps look weedy (although they are pretty good on their own - expensive to run in comparison though). Tilleys, Petromax, Vapalux, Coleman etc - same applies really. If buying new - the Coleman Northstar petrol lamp - around £60-70. Runs 8hrs on a litre of petrol - twice as bright as a typical gas lamp - is supposed to be pretty good. It gets a general thumbs up from beach fishermen, which is a bit of an endorsement really, as that's about as harsh an environment as this type of lamp will ever see.
Hope this helps!
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Topic: lighting
