...if they were the same price?
This one (tree is about 100 feet away)
This one?
or this one?
OK, by now you probably figured out it is a trick question, sorry bout that. All three of the above photos were of the same light, on the same setting, taken withing seconds of each other tonight. And PLEASE, let me clarify, I mean absolutely no disrespect to anyone on this forum who has ever taken the time and effort to submit beamshots. That has never been my intent, and I respect those who have gone through all the steps that you did just to post a photo here.
I am submitting this thread with the intention of showing that with just a little bit more effort, your results will be substantially better. It is not difficult, so if you care to try it out, read on, but I suspect this will be a bit long and boring for most.
#1 If you have a Point and Shoot camera that does not have manual controls, ignore the rest of this thread. Your camera will pick out whatever setting its computer feels most closely matches daylight. You will throw away a lot of images. If you have a Fireworks mode or Candlelight mode, you might try them, but basically it is still going to try to make all of your beams from various lights look the same. You will get a good hotspot, but tint and brightness will not be something you will be able to compare to other lights. Try it and you will see what I mean.
#2 If you have manual controls on your camera, you are the master of your domain. Check out fonarik.com where you will find HUNDREDS of beamshots (usually four per camera in each of 3 different settings, total 12 or more per camera tested) and every single image was taken with the exact same camera and same settings. Awesome site if you are buying a "popular" brand light. That is what you want to do with your beamshots.
#3 Realize that beamshots are pretty advanced stuff. They are tricky, they are difficult, they take some time. Why are they so hard to do? Because you aren't photographing something, you are trying to photograph the light that comes off of some thing. That is a huge difference if you think about it.
Let me show you what I mean.
Here is a photo I took tonight in my absolutely dark living room. I used an S-mini XM-L as the only light in the room, beam focused just above the piano. Took it with wide-open aperture (2.8f) and 1/25th of a second shutter speed. Still got a little glare off the oil painting, but overall got a good grip of what the light could do.
Just a couple of seconds later, I took the exact same shot, but instead of 1/25th I shot it at 1/2 second, so almost a half second longer shutter speed.
Now here is the problem; the average person out there would look at the last image and say. "That's a crappy photo, it is totally over-exposed". But we are flashaholics! We look at the second image and say, " I want that flashlight, that is awesome!" We don't give a rat's patootie about how the piano looks, in fact, to paraphrase Foy, if the light is so bright that it makes the piano invisible, just a blur of light, we are in love with the device that caused it.
But both photos are the same light, the only difference was how the operator set up the camera or, worse yet, we put the camera on "Auto" and let it try to make daylight out of our beamshot. The camera gives us what the average person wants to see. THAT IS NOT WHAT WE WANT TO SEE. We want to see how the image really looks to our eyeball when we shine some specific light on it. We don't care about the subject like our camera does, we care about capturing candlepower.
Let's go back to the original three photos at the start of this thread.
The first one was shot at 1/3 of a second, the second was taken at 2 seconds and the third at 3.2 seconds shutter time. Again, the average photo critic loves the first one, hates the overexposure in the other two.
Not us, we love #3 and rush to buy that light. But its the same light as the others, the good old KD C8 set on High. No other settings were changed. Cameras by definition are light-capturing machines. They will take in as much light as they can without blowing-out whites, when you set them on Auto. They will lie to us about flashlight beams in the dark because their makers thought we all wanted to see as much light as possible.
People are out there searching the Internet for specific products, coming to our forum, usually as guests, and paying attention to we say about flashlights. Maybe I'm a dreamer or a purist or overly critical, but I think if they come here they deserve to get good information. They deserve an accurate depiction of what a torch beam looks like and they should be able to compare it to other lights.
That's my only point people, if you hate me for that so be it. I won't make any more comments about it in other threads, I did not intend to criticize anyone's efforts, or wreck any threads, and I thought that I tried to be a gentleman about what I did say. Please forgive me if it did not come across that way.
And as someone else said, I guess even Point and Shoot beamshots are better than no beamshots, but be careful what you are impressed by in them. The hotspot size will still be accurate, but the lumens and the tint will not be. They may be close, of they may vary by hundreds of lumens apart because the camera made the decision what it wanted us to see.
So if your camera has an "M" setting, use it. Outside, set Shutter to 1/2 second and Aperture to the lowest number you can find, and check out the photo on your computer to see what it looks like. If it is brighter than what you think your eyes saw, decrease shutter speed to 1/3 second and try again. If it is too dark, increase shutter speed to .6 sec or so and see what you think. It takes some trial and error, but it is worth it. On a long-distance shot, you may go for a 1-second shutter speed, but look hard and see if that is really what you saw. If your camera's aperture only goes to f5.6, you may have to make shutter speed even longer, but do so cautiously.
Oh, a couple other hints. A tripod or very solid surface is a necessity, no way are you getting long exposures cleanly when you hand-hold a 1/2 second shot.
And put the camera on 2-second timer when you take the photo, so your finger-push on the trigger won't rock the camera itself.
If you can manually set white balance, set it to Custom 5400, you will get a better indication of beam tint.
I use ISO 400, fonarik.com uses ISO 800; but their camera is way better than mine!
Good luck, and good shooting!