I think it was in another thread that you were contemplating which way to go with Poser (or possibly another 3D app). Poser 8 is a bit of an interim version in terms of lighting. For a minimal investment, I'd be going to P  9 and then you can take advantage of what HBorre was referring to: the simpler the better.

Older versions of Poser depended on a lot of kludges in order to light scenes believeably. As you move up the Poser versions, those kludges no longer apply: indeed, you're going to find them a nuisance. Unfortunately, a lot of vendors - I can't speak for the products you mentioned, but still - will continue to stay with an older way of doing things because it's what they know.

You're probably not going to find shortcuts in buying stuff: as frankT said... you're best off getting your head around what you want to achieve, gets some books or do a google on lighting or have a look on here and get your head around proper lighting techniques.

Remember: the world we live in has an atmosphere. When we photograph out-of-doors, we are also photographing that atmosphere. In Poser, without anything in the scene, you're basically in outer space: no atmosphere. For outdoor scenes, I always use a skydome (Bagginsbill's is about the best) and IDL at reasonably good quality. 1 light, infinite, 80 - 90 intensity, raytraced shadows. You might want to do a search on ray-trace and user Bagginsbill on this forum: he's written copious amounts of information on achieving consistently good lighting using ray-tracing and why depth-mapped shadows have gone the way of the rumble seat.

End of the day: save yourself some money and read a lot on this forum and DNA's... lots of stuff on lighting for free!

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks