The common flashlight can be found in almost every tool box, car trunk, or kitchen drawer. Flashlights are perfect for producing a high intensity beam to provide temporary lighting, supplemental lighting or emergency lighting in a portable manner. However, these beams are typically spot style beams which produce high intensity lighting levels in a small area.
As such, flashlights are unsuitable for use in producing a broader flood style of illumination that is often desired at campsites or in dark rooms where just general overall illumination is needed. This type of illumination is usually provided by a lantern which produces a broad lighting path over a 360° area. When both functions are desired, the user is often forced to carry both a flashlight and lantern to produce the desired lighting patterns. Unfortunately this adds to increased costs and more importantly increased weight which is often a critical factor while hiking or camping.
Various attempts have been made to provide multi-function portable lighting devices. Examples of these attempts can be seen by reference to several U.S. patents, for example U.S. Pat. No. 5,412,548; U.S. Pat. No. 5,440,465; U.S. Pat. No. 5,570,948; U.S. Pat. No. 5,893,629; and U.S. Pat. No. 6,004,008. However, none of these designs are similar to the present invention.
While these apparatuses fulfill their respective, particular objectives, each of these references suffer from one (1) or more disadvantages. Many such apparatuses do not provide multiple lighting functions that can function independently and simultaneously. Also, many such apparatuses are unnecessarily bulky or complex and as a result are difficult and unintuitive to operate. Furthermore, many such apparatuses do not provide a sufficiently wide range of settings that can be utilized to accommodate a wide enough range of uses, such as spot illumination, room illumination, emergency indication, soft light usage, and the like. Accordingly, there exists a need for a means by which an apparatus can provide benefits of flashlights and also produce a range of flood style lighting patterns in a simple manner and without the disadvantages as described above. The development of the present invention substantially departs from the conventional solutions and in doing so fulfills this need.