Favorite beam shape, Spot or Flood

What kind of beam shape do you prefer, Spot or flood and why? I realize that there are different tools for different purposes, but If you had to pick what would you prefer, and find most useful.

An intense spot is fun to play with, but I seldom need it. Flood is generally much more useful.

Geoff

Personally with so little detail to the choices, I had to go with Flood. I am of the belief that a set of flashlights should be used like a set of Golf clubs. You should always choose the right light for the use you are putting it to. That being said however, I believe that 75% or more of my flashlight usage falls into the 1-20 ft. range which makes flood lights become just about the most useful. Oftentimes when I am navigating at night, if I have grabbed one of my more throw based lights, I find myself cranking it up a notch in brightness and using a ceiling bounce technique to try and eliminate the tunnel vision that ensues. This negates the effective low beam uber efficiencies however and I often times wish I had a more flood like beam so I could retain those.

Don't get me wrong, I think my throw lights have their place, I just am still looking for the optimum flood...

I like my flashlights to have good spot and flood with a smooth transition between the two. Seems to be a lot of Crees available these days that accomplish this using a mild OP reflector. The best examples I have of this are my DX R2 modules and a Brinkman 3aaa Cree.

I never understood peoples who want lights that come with a flood beam?!

I mean you can always put a nice diffuser on to get floody but not the other way around (at least not that easy).

So besides preferring flood or throw beams one should almost always take a trowy flashlight with a diffuser if needed. Best of both worlds.

2 cents

Both have their advantages. The key is to understand your preferences.

I usually prefer a more floody beam though, with a broad hot spot that gradually transitions.

The multi-die P60 modules (orange peel) offer a very good combination of both spot/flood.

nudel said:

I never understood peoples who want lights that come with a flood beam?!

I mean you can always put a nice diffuser on to get floody but not the other way around (at least not that easy).

So besides preferring flood or throw beams one should almost always take a trowy flashlight with a diffuser if needed. Best of both worlds.

2 cents

Click to expand...

-Diffusers absorb light and reduce lumen output (doesn't matter to me but most here are of the "brighter is better" school).
-Depending on the diffuser used, they can be $$$

FWIW one of the nicest lights I have used is a 6P+M60+SF beam flip-diffuser. You can go instantly form M60 to M60F with a lens-flip.

I prefer a spot because my lights are generally used for two purposes, to survey my property at night and for self defense. If the light has sufficiently high output it's easy enough to just bounce it off the ceiling to illuminate an indoor space. If the spot is too bright I use the spill. For a flood light to be at all interesting to me it has to have really high output, like 1,000 or more lumens.

This is a popular topic that has been visited many time over the years.
I personally prefer maximum field of view illuminated evenly with just enough contrast to provide information but not beyond the range of my eye's sensitivity. This defines a flood I suspect so that is the shape I prefer. However in many cases, one does not have the power at hand to flood the field of interest and at that point one must collimate and focus the available light in a tighter beam of distribution. At some distance, only a spot of light will be adequate.

My favorite beam shape is the one that accomplishes the job at hand.

Sunlite 16WFP best of both worlds flood and throw :twothumbs

A couple of months ago I probably would have said I prefer a flood style beam. But after working with an E2L and E2DL for a while I find that I favor throw, provided that there are multiple output levels available to make the light useful at very close range.

Why throw? Well, I recently found myself using lights to illuminate objects at a distance and what I noticed was that the large amount of spill some generated were lighting up nearby homes far more than I desired, and probably far more than the owners liked. Both of those lights and many others except the really tight optics still provide enough spill for close work but spread it out far enough at a distance to be less annoying.

GreySave that's a good point

I think both have their place as it has already been said here,

for instance a pure flood light down a long narrow alley wouldn't be best IMO here a throw light is king.

On the other hand a throw light in a large hall wouldn't be best,here a flood light would work better.

I'd go with flood.
Can't think of a situation where I would need a spot that
reach more then 10 - 20 meters.
On the other hand, how usefull is it to see things 100 meters away while
the hole you are just about to fall in is badly lit? :naughty:

I'm one of those middle of the road guys, leaning more toward a predominant flood beam. On the one hand, a pure flood beam (mule) is absolutely worthless to me in most circumstances. On the other hand, a pure throw beam (laser) serves me no purpose in the real everyday world. Excellent points have been made thus far in the previous posts for either flood or throw. For my money though, it's pretty tough to beat the beam from a Surefire L4 (luxeon).

I picked Spot because I want maximum blindability, but prefer a wide spill area around the hot spot to lightly illuminate the surrounding area.

Along side this, since it seems that Flood is receiving nearly as many votes as Throw (F11-T15 at this post) my question is, why is it that Manufacturers seem to be predominantly creating throw focused lights lately? Most of the lights I have reviewed have had a drastically focused beam causing a brilliant spot with little to no spread. The TA30 I am working on at the moment is the same way. Things seem to have come a long way from hearing this forum hold the Surefire focused Lux V "Wall of Light" in the absolute highest regard. I'd like to see a resurgence of that, at least in a smattering of lights.

I see obviously the need for both, and I wouldn't trade my uber focused lights for anything when that is what I am looking for. I just personally think that those lights are more special usage, where an EDC style is most likely going to be used in limited range thereby benefiting most from a wider spread of light. AmIright?

I prefer floodier beams. With gradual transition, decent size hotspot and no rings/artifacts if possible. I think my favorite so far is the Inova T1. Except for the 16 holes in the hotspot (which is nearly invisible btw, took me 2 weeks to spot it), it is the perfect beam.

Being greedy I'd prefer to have a balance of throw and flood... with throw being the optimal feature (for my own needs), that said however I believe the multi-emitter format (like SSC P7s) excels in both requirements :thumbsup:

More and more I find myself leaning towards a flood light, especially indoors.

kramer5150 said:

-Diffusers absorb light and reduce lumen output.

Click to expand...

I've been looking into a SF F04 for my E1B Backup, especially since I've heard they will also fit McGizmos. Does anyone know how much light you lose with the diffuser? Thanks.

I think flood light is more useful in daily applications, since an intense spot beam usually tends to hurt my eyes in the dark.