Well dog walking and camping are two primary uses for my lights too (don't like to hike in the dark though). However, I again like low lumens (around 4) to walk the dog... well, cause I rather not be too obvious when my dog chooses to **** on other people's property. There's lots of deer around, and about once a week we come across a herd... I blast them with 100-200 lumens when I hear the rustling, but that's about it. I find 20-30 lumens just fine for quick perimeter scan and it doesn't fry my night vision too bad, but for most part I just use 4 on my Quark with the dog.
I took a look at the specs on the Petzl XP2. First, you can't compare runtimes at max when one's 200 lumens and the other 60 lumens. Second, Petzl is claiming 80 hours at Max from 3xAAA ?
Well, I guess that's not exactly lying since they never say "80 hrs @ 60 lumens"..... you understand the non-regulated game these guys play, right?
I've personally never tested the runtimes on my Petzls and Black Diamonds, but my memory is that I've always been disappointed with their runtimes (and I mostly use low) as the batt indicators go red, or they have dimmed to the point of being unusable, despite the 3xAAA or 2xAA configs. Conversely, I'm always kind of impressed that my 1xAA Quark or Zebralight is still going.
I think the camping/climbing companies should leave the lighting to the flashlight companies.
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