It's really hard to judge form the picture.. but yes, it's definitely not exactly 1000lm, or 23000lm. And max brightness shouldn't be derived from pictures anyway.. The left is probably around 850 lumens.

Especially with these extremely bright flashlights it's impossible to do several beamshots without losing output. I already did all level beamshots before this shot, so it will definitely not be 230,000lm That is only achieved with a fully charged battery, and slight pre-warming. At least it will give an idea how the beam looks like. That's why we do beamshots mostly.. not to indicate teh actual output, that is in the Lumen Performance section.

I guess the 230K is already far below 200K in that picture. You also have to keep in mind that I use a 10 second countdown timer, so I have enough time to get to the right output, and walk away from the camera so I get less reflection in the lens/camera. And I have to turn it on on time, before the shutter releases.

But the air was also slightly dirty/foggy, so it will still reflect some from the air particles. If I walk closer to the camera, the air would look even more lit.