Are there any links to anywhere that has got any IBL image maps, as i dont know how to make a spherical photo, and it would be nice to have some of different weather conditons and times of day (inside and out). im sure others would also find this usefull

I'm pretty sure any picture will do.  You can Google HDRI, and Panoramic Images too.  I think a your basic aspect ratio is about 1:2, but I've mapped a sphere with 1:1 - 1:3-4.

If you have photoshop you can prep a texture, for mapping onto a sphere, with Richard Rosenman's Photoshop Plugin:

Spherical Mapping Corrector

Explanation on what a light probe is and how it works

First thing you need to do is download the free  HDR Shop v1

Next read the tutorials they have there on how to use it. It's pretty straight forward but you will need to read the tutorials on how to get started with it.

Here is a better tutorial on using HDR Shop

Here are some  images

You will need the HDR Shop to convert those to .jpg images for use inside Poser.

You can also make your own from normal images but you need multiple images in order to do that. You can see what I mean by going to this link and scrolling down to the cross format images.

 What I do is find HDR ready images that I can turn into a sphere using HDR Shop.  Here are some links:

http://gl.ict.usc.edu/Data/HighResProbes/    Download the HDR ones

http://hdri.3dweave.com/library/

Last year I managed to find some other links as well by searching google for things like IBL images, HDR Images, and Light Probe Images.  I can't readily see them in google right now: it's possible that the sites are gone or that I'm just not dealving deep enough into the search.  But those links above should be more than enough for your uses.

EDIT:

You might want to check out these 2 links at RDNA. Our very creative bagginsbill has a great technique for a new way to use light probes!  And he was kind enough to write up a tutorial on how he accomplished it.  The best thing is that it only uses ONE light!!!

Not your average IBL image (see tutorial just below)

HDRI IBL in Poser using LDRI with Nodes

Cheap plastic decorative baubles can be useful: the big silvered ones. The chrome-plated mirror look. Go into your Poser 6 folder, and check in the runtimetexturesPoser 6 TexturesLightProbes folder. Look at the roadAndSky.jpg image, and you'll see that it's a photo of such a chromed ball sitting on a road. No, I don't know how they avoided getting a reflection of the camera. jungleShadeBrightDay.jpg has the photographer reflectd in the middle of the image. You can use something which gives a softer image. Visual Effects professionals will use a set of several to get an image of the lighting on a film shoot--white, 18%-grey, and mirror are the usual. You'll see that they aren't huge images, and the results are a bit soft. SO DIY seems quite possible.

Quote - No, I don't know how they avoided getting a reflection of the camera.

I believe in the ones where you don't see the camera, exposures were taken from several angles, the results being stitched together in an app like the Pro version of HDR Shop.

Also, the poster didn't say which version of Poser.  P6 uses LDR and P7 uses HDR.  The free version of HDR Shop will save to JPG, making HDR images usable in P6.

John