Aside from his settings being a bit strange it shouldnt have an effect on the brightness of the image. (I would use medium IR settings and 80/40 to start - the animation modes aren’t for pre calculated static maps)
Have you loaded the irradiance map into the viewer? You should be able to look at it and see if the information is there.
It’s hard to say what the issue is without poking around. Something did go wrong somewhere though.