Flashlight question

I have a few decent flashlights, but I'm not really a flashlight geek and I'm wondering if someone can maybe help with an odd question.

When I walk my dog at night I take a Fenix light that is pretty bright. It can easily light up a field up to several hundred yards. However, it's really hard to see any features of things.

Case in point, I saw a fox, or think it was a fox, the other night. When I shine the light on it, I can its profile but no real features. The color looks just grey. I can really only distinguish things like shape, ears, etc.

I'm wondering if this is due to the general diffusion of the light. The flashlight has a good spot and at 25 yards or so it should be easy to see more features than I can.

I'm thinking of getting a light with a much more focused and intense beam, but I'm not sure if that would solve the issue. I was thinking about the Fenix HT18 which while it has similar lumens to mine is more than 4x as intense (200K candela vs my 40K). Anyone have a light like this that can comment? I'm not ready to take the plunge into laser flashlights but curious about those as well. Thanks.

 

Check out STREAMLIGHT Flashlights, Strion and Stinger. They are both LED and Rechargeable.

 

My guess is that the flashlight has a low CRI (Color Rendering Index) number https://www.superbrightleds.com/blog/what-is-cri.html
then intense brightness is washing out even more

 

Huh, didn't even know that was a thing. I found some high CRI flashlights, but I'm assuming I'd still need one with enough brightness or intensity to light up something at distance. Thanks.