SureFire M6 Guardian

The SureFire M6 Guardian is a flashlight produced by SureFire, a company which produces tactical flashlights. It is relatively small with a Mil-Spec Type III anodized aluminum casing and has a 250 lumen beam from a Xenon lamp. SureFire claims that this beam has over 12 times the light of a big two-D-cell flashlight and is bright enough to temporarily blind and disorient a person by impairing his night-adapted vision. The flashlight has an integral shock-isolation system to withstand repeated recoil or impact. The light output can be doubled to 500 lumens with an included add-on. The bulb is covered with a pyrex window to add further strength. Unlike traditional D-cell flashlights, the SureFire M6 uses six 3-volt lithium batteries (interchangeable with the kind used in military Automated Net Control Devices and some digital cameras), which produce the high lumen output, but limit the battery life to 60 minutes (high illumination mode) or 20 minutes (ultra high illumination mode). The M6 is housed in aerospace-grade aluminum.

Design

The New York Times referred to the M6 as being of the "design school that might be called Modern Militant, the most familiar example of which is the Hummer." This was later used in SureFire's marketing brochure about the M6. Co-founder of Wikipedia Jimmy Wales noted it as one of his most "prized possessions."

Application

Cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto used a SureFire M6 Guardian to light a pivotal desert-crossing night scene in the film Babel. Since it's hard to create fake moonlight on film ("So the challenge became how to light a big night exterior with the light from a single flashlight."), he suggested the M6 because he had heard of the M6's brightness. It played a huge part in him saying, "the effect was scary and kinetic... I was very, very happy with the results, and we didn't need to manipulate the scene at all in the DI."

References

• ""M6 Guardian "". SureFire. Retrieved 2007-12-10.