I guess I’ll continue the thread necromancy and opine a bit. Huge fan of having a white light on every long gun, even the ones I ise primarily for hunting with NIght Vision. Usually run a piggy-back white light on those, in addition to an IR laser and/or illuminator.
Gets heavy, especially hanging off the distal end of the weapon, but when you need a light, you flat need it. And other systems just don’t fit the same bill.
I have a couple Cloud Defensive lights..Rein and a Rein Micro. Great lights, but not a fan. I hate their proprietary activation switches, and don’t like that they don’t use a standard head mounting system so I can swap out different heads for different needs.
Here’s one of ‘em (middle upper missing its red dot in this pic)…the micro; just mounted it a couple weeks ago after swapping around accessories on my main pig guns:
The top one in that pic has a Modlite compatible head (18350/18650 architecture); again, not mounted in this pic. It’s sitting on another upper right now.
I’m slowly migrating away from Surefire and CR123 powered lights to dual fuel; mostly Modlite heads because I really like the extra throw I get with their OKW head (Candela is king for throw, not total lumen), and like the better balanced throw/spill from their PLHv2 head for general use where I don’t know if I’ll be taking shots at or beyond 100 yards or so.
The newer LEP heads out there are very interesting too. Will pick up one of Z Bolt’s heads with the Scout body adapter at some point this Winter to see if the hype is real.
I’m pretty heavily invested in Surefire dual IR/white light KM1s and KM2s though, and frankly prefer them for a HD gun (very balanced spill and throw), so I won’t be off that wagon any time soon.
For a generic light, I still love an Arisaka (or Reptilia) light body, with direct mount to my rail (vs pic rail and clamp), and use whatever head I need for that task. I almost exclusively use Surefire tailcaps, but have a couple Arisaka momentary switches on a couple rifles too..
I only have a couple with remote switches (besides the aforementioned Cloud Reins), and prefer Unity for that need.
Man, I wish someone made a generic tail cap/remote for those Cloud Defense lights...again, great light, and the interface/switch works just fine, but I hate not having the same (or at least very similar) control setups across all my working rifles.
edit: here’s a better pic of their permanently mounted, proprietary switch: