I find that I don't use my lights much. I tend to want to use it for a few seconds here or there, like to look in a pot to see how cooking is going. Because I use it so little I found that with a headlamp I tended to not bother to dig it out for the few seconds of use at a time and wound up just doing without.

For me the answer was to wear an egear pico led light on a cord around my neck. It is really tiny, weighs 1/4 ounce, is reasonably bright, and has decent battery life. I think they claim 10 or 15 hours of battery life. For me that means that I finished a coast to coast trip with the same battery and them went on a two week backpacking trip still on the same batteries. Since it is only $5-10 depending on where you buy it, and weighs only 1/4 ounce, I just carry two rather than carry spare batteries. That said i don't think I have ever needed the back up one on any trip.

I find that for most stuff like cooking or other close tasks I can lean over the work so the light shines where i need it with the Pico just hanging from the cord around my neck.

Back when I did use a headlamp I liked my Petzl Tika Plus pretty well. I had a Black Diamond (I forget the model) for a while that failed and wasn't as nice even while it still worked.