Mr D,

Yeah, what you said... and again, a pair of awesome light sources you're carrying there...

I have never been a fan of flashlights in the woods. I'll post separately why; for now, suffice to say that personally I carry flashlights for emergencies - rural or urban - not because I need or want them away from the city lights. On close scrutiny, most of my work use of flashlights is closer to emergency type applications than anything else.

What I need most of the time in a flashlight is task/mission lighting in an urban settting. And what I need is a light that gives me most of my field of vision illuminated, not something to shine on a building across the Mississippi River. I do not like or need or want something that drives my vision to a single small hotspot and leaves the other 98% of my natural field of vision in darkness. There are close-up tasks, like on machinery or building components, where a spot is OK because for a while that's what I'm focusing on. But a flood will also do the job most of the time in those cases.

Throw is relative in most legitimate need urban settings. Set aside Fire, Police, and other emergency services uses; those are specialized work needs. Us ordinary citizens need to be prepared to cope with power outages in dark places / times of day. Maybe render First Aid. Move to a safer location. Check on framuses under the hoods of our vehicles or the wheel covers on a flat tire. Brighten dim corners of parking garages to make the human cockroaches scurry way. Stuff like that really doesn't require a laser-like flashlight beam and actually most of those uses are done poorly with a spot as compared to a semi-flood or flood.

Put all that together and enter the high-powered LED flashlights - almost all of them excell at these sorts of uses; they are far superior in most cases to most incandescents. Some of the incandescents do an OK job, too - the new style Pelican M6 is better (more practical) than the original IMO because they have a wider beam (but still not like a good LED; still trades off a potentially huge flood for throw).

I said this is the short verson, so I'll stop here... I think you have made excellent arguements and I agree with your conclusions.

Regards,

Tom