Quote - There's an interesting debate to be had here about why 'physically accurate' light modelling doesn't always produce what we expect to see: and more interesting still is what drives those expectations.

I'd expect that someone coming from a photographic background would have different expectations of what a 2d representation of a 3d world (digital or real) would likely look like.

I see thousands and thousands of people every week taking pictures at night of architectural landmarks across the street from them, and these people are using point and click cameras, flashing away. These are not people who understand cameras. But they expect the camera to reproduce what their eyes see, and they use the flash because it's the default setting when you're about to seriously underexpose otherwise.

Photographers expect the camera to reproduce the scene according to their experience of and/or knowledge about using the device under those particular conditions.

You know exactly what every one of those night time pictures of the legislature buildings taken by tourists with an iPhone is going to look like. They don't -- until they see the dark brown mud with a few wobbly lights that they've photographed. Then they proudly post it on Facebook anyway.

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PoserPro 2014, PS CS5.5 Ext, Nikon D300. Win 8, i7-4770 @ 3.4 GHz, AMD Radeon 8570, 12 GB RAM.