Quote - "I will let you decide which looks better."

I know you mean well, but based upon what render settings and lighting in Carrara? ;)  If you choose settings in Carrara that don't match up to the Poser render then you simply need to adjust your Carrara settings ;)  There is a learning curve to it, of course.  I don't do stills much, and it's a pretty broad topic.  There are lots of threads in this forum and others that could be of help with your render/lighting settings in Carrara.

 

Its not so much the lighting that I have problems with, it's the level and quality of detail on the imported poser items.  C5 creates a bunch of very mixed up procedural shaders for the P6 textures on import using transposer, and it is nearly impossible to get them to look the way they should.  They all seem to have a plastic doll quality about them.  The figures themselves come out much better in Poser.  In C5 it loses much of the surface detail, moles, freckles etc.  I will see what I can do on retexturing the models in C5 and see if that works.  AT this point, I will be happy if I can just get rid of the overly smooth plastic look.