photo study help

[fco3d]

Hello,
I am working in this photo study for a new development that the neighborhood association is questioning about how much light pollution will produce.
I lawyer took some photos and send me the RAW files, I have the project matching camera position and camera settings, I am using IES data from engineering so in theory everything should be correct.
But when comparing my rendering with the photos, the rendering look more burn out that the actual pictures.
I have the original RAW images so no post production on the photos, and that leave me with the question if my render settings are not correct??
I am using linear workflow and rendering BF-LC.
If I apply a little of color mapping the image look closer, but in theory I should not do that, if everything is physically correct.
Then I wonder if the camera sensor being 14 Bits only still compress some of the brightness that compared to a full float rendering (32Bits) will display more burn out.
Is there a relation of bit depth with burn values in color mapping?? should I just eyeballing??

Your help is appreciated.

Fco.

[Neilg]

camera sensors do color mapping themselves to put a 'look' onto the photos. if it's as minor as you say, tweak it to match.

[fco3d]

Thank you, I wasn't sure about it, but it kind of make seance.
Thank you

[vlado]

What Neilg said - camera sensors do not have perfectly linear output. Some manufacturers or software packages may provide profiles from their RAW format to a specific color space, but generally you can't assume the RAW colors to mean anything in particular.

Best regards,
Vlado