Physical Camera exposure problems

[joconnell]

That'd be my thoughts too - not every lens is going to darken in the exact same way that the physicam does so it's something I wouldn't like to see burnt in to the render. If that darkening was totally consistent throughout the entire world of lenses then fine but I'm very wary of the current approach!

[9k_JHT]

The real problem is that the units in Maya default to centimetres and thus if you enable the physical camera it works in something like a macro mode.
I've done a simple scene with sun/sky and a 1unit sphere. The focus distance changes from 6cm to 20cm.
Most real lenses can't focus this close, so there is no way to reproduce the effect.

On the other hand if you change the units to be meters in the preferences and make the same scene looking scene, then this time the focus distance changes from 6m to 20m (in my test).
There is no perceived difference in the exposure of the image when the distance is 6m and when it is 20m.

Out of curiosity why wouldn't there be some sort of conversion built into the units of the physical camera? After all a meter is just 100 centimeters... At work our units are cm for our CAD data so I stick to cm.