Any benefit of using Physical Camera Exposure color correction?

[X14Halo]

We are starting up a new project with some photoreal architecture visualization flythroughs. We will be using the physical camera to control depth of field and motion blur, but there has been some debate as to whether or not using the "exposure color correction" on the camera will lead to a more photoreal image. What are your thoughts on it? I thought that for example if you have a very bright sky, the ground would get quite dark because of the exposure of the sky. However if I do a non-physical camera render, save an image, and then turn it on and try to match the value of the sky by playing with fstop/shutter speed, the ground looks to be the same as with not using physical camera. It is not darker because of the exposure like I would expect.

[joconnell]

There's two ways to think about it. If you do physical camera, you've got to know the physical brightness of your lights to get the correct brightness. Unless you're using the sun sky system (or lux values) most people will make guesses based on test renders anyway and that's kind of the same as using a normal camera and light ranges in more
normal ranges. What might be more useful is trying to get accurate brightness values for your textures in relation to each other so that the GI will bounce correctly and give you realistic feeling light and contrast.

Edit:

Your main benefit if you're doing arch vis stuff is by the nature of light being directional or moving inside to outside, you have to adjust your light brightness per camera if you've no exposure controls. If you're using the physical camera, you can use one lighting setup for a load of cameras and use their individual exposure controls to brighten or darken the same lighting on a per shot / angle / camera basis.