sorry, i took so long to respond, but it's been in the mid-90s or so and our air conditioning is out.  it has been for months, but the heat is just gotten unbearable in the past month or so.  i've been trying to get away from the heat.

first off, it's not so much the monitor that's an issue.  it's literally  the colors i'm getting.  i don't trust my monitor at all, so i wouldn't just depend on that. it's that i'm getting colors with what graphics software are saying are a really high luminance, imho.  for instance, in a picture i just downloaded that seems to be pretty bright compared to what i'm trying for, the darkest shadow is at 9 to 13 out of 240  luminance (according to the color picker). 

but my monitor shows that 5 is the same. 

i did find the 2.2 part of the shader, and tried switching it to 1.  that gave me less what i expected, which means it sort of fixed what i'm talking about, but made everything darker.  so i have my nice defined spot, but it's too dark.  so far the only one i'm thinking is any good is the test with GC, 1 spot, 1 IBL at 10%.  i would even pull the IBL higher, due to how dark some shadows are.  if i had a photo of a nude in a spot, i might be able to judge on the harsh shadow beneath her breasts, because to me they look both way too sharp and way too dark, but that could just be me.

to be honest, i don't see the point in posting pictures now.  because i feel like you're just going to tell me it's right and accurate, and it's just not jibing with what i'm getting from the photos i have, nor the reality i've seen.  i can't read outside at night, but an infinite at 1% gives me an image in which i can see every detail of lit texture.   to get what i'd consider the directional (rather than the tiny bit of ambient ) light i'd say was appropriate for most nights without artificial lights, i'm having to pull my infinite down below that.  so far i've tried .1 and  .4.

actually, personally, i'm happy with it at about those levels.  i still think that's a nuts reaction to the Poser light scale (though maybe it will make more sense if i can find comparisons to sun and moon luminosity), but if my limitation with the shader is just with infinites, frankly, i can handle that.

i think it would be much more helpful to work backwards, because i think arguing perception on something without an actual reference isn't very helpful.  if you could show me how to match at least one photos i've found within the same range of luminance as determined by color pickers, i'll be quite content.

http://gallery.photo.net/photo/5676285-lg.jpg
http://www.sxc.hu/photo/68654
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/26/53737078_da32aa843b.jpg?v=0
http://www.morguefile.com/archive/?display=73109&

not dark, but it has good range and overexposure:
http://www.morguefile.com/archive/?display=206845&

this is a bright one, and probably easy to match due to really good even skin tones so i think matching colors and luminance will show how close you are more easily.  basically i think the people are about as close to 3d looking as you can get real people, so the non-shader aspects of matching reality won't hit the eye as much. http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1680385

edited to add: ok, i'm going back in front of the fan for a while now.  i can't take the heat coming off the computer (though it's temp seems to be fine).  oh, and i double checked that i used the synchronize with the prop from vssPR2ControlProp.zip, but i still got a blank image in my displacement node (hadn't noticed till i was adding back the GC).  is there a way to use the right prop and get the wrong synchronize?  and should V2 be having problems with her eyes and lashes?