yes in Dale’s experiment the flashlight was held eight feet to the side of the camera so that the camera was not looking down the beam shot. I found that holding my arm straight out to my side causes a lot less scatter and “reflection”of the light (cool neutral and warm). Sometimes holding it straight arm above my head works better also because you are spilling less light directly in front of you on the ground. Also other objects in the spill or beam between you and the target are going to reflect light back to your eyesight. The warmer it is the less all of that scatter and objects in the spill interfere with your ability to see down range. It’s very easy for people to experiment themselves with the flashlight held at arm’s length off to the side or overhead especially in different atmospheric conditions. Headlights make this even more apparent because the light is right next to your eyes. A cool white headlight on a misty or foggy night is just plain miserable. I’ve seen this in cars/trucks also where are the higher up the seating position is above the headlights the less glare you get. Edit. I’m using scatter reflection and glare somewhat interchangeably here. Not entirely sure I should be doing that. Second edit. The other thing about those Water tower pictures is what is missing. What’s missing is anything in the spill.I don’t know if that’s because the pictures were cropped or the camera was zoomed in or he was up on one high water tower looking at the other one so there was nothing in the spill zone. But objects in the spill is/are going to interfere with your ability to see down range with human eyes. So there are problems with the camera experiment.
The premise goes well beyond this thread. If you look at any multiple emitter option lights for sale, you’ll find that SST-20 is not a pricier option. So someone coming along as a new member and declaring XP-L HI inferior, is extraordinarily ignorant. To make it less so, they could have framed it a very different way, first admitting their lack of knowledge, then stating they didn’t understand why the price difference by emitter and if someone could explain it or point them to a source to read.