Here are the pictures of the light beams -- I had two other very bright (or so I thought) flashlights to compare the UltraStinger with, the Pelican Black Knight M10 (4C xenon) and the Ultra's own little brother, the PolyStinger (rated at 15,000 CP).
First the ceiling shots, from an angle and about 15 feet below. Here's the Ultra on the left vs. the Poly, both at tightest focus:
Notice how much whiter and brighter the Ultra's hotspot is.
Then I put it up against the M10 (which has a non-adjustable, set focus):
Although the M10 has a nice bright hotspot, it is noticeably smaller than the Ultra's.
But the differences are not great, not from just fifteen feet away on the ceiling. I wanted to get the lights shining at a distance, to see where the beams start petering out, so I went outside and shot the lights over a small wooded valley behind my house.
First up, the Ultra on the left, the M10 on the right, against a tree that was measured at twenty yards away, digital camera set at optimum night exposure:
Then against the Poly under the exact same conditions:
You can see the Poly Stinger's beam has faded significantly to the camera's lens.
And now to separate the menlights from the boyslights -- Forty yards away. First the M10 (Ultra is on the right in both shots):
The M10's beam is getting quite faint, even with the camera's night exposure set to maximum.
The Poly did even worse:
The few faint colored speckles on the left are what's left of the Poly Stinger's beam.
In all fairness, all lights were clearly visible to the naked eye, even at 40 yards. But that's why pro reviewers like Craig Johnson of the LED Museum use those accurate instruments like the ProMetric light analyzer -- it really reveals the intensity difference.
Man, I really like this light. Not only does its elegantly slim profile feel good in the hand, it also has that even, intense, and blob-free hotspot, and when you spin the bezel to turn it into a flood beam, the hotspot actually keeps growing for a while, retaining its white-hot intensity with no rings or dark spots before finally breaking up.
Looks like I'll hafta label all my other lights now -- BU (before UltraStinger) and AU...
