ok , maybe I agree with you Dilbert, but a large white rectangle (emitter) is just a large rectangle.. and so you'll never have the subtility of a real large real light.. this is why I suggested an HDRI studio...
The problem with a landscape HDRI is that there is no more light depth info, and all the light coming to the scene is sent from equal distance.. (usually a half sphere) this is why most of time.. the resulting render look somehow strange.. the ones made by HDRI studio are "OK" because they placed their light sources at approx equal distance from the cam (spheron) that captured the... HDRI..
The best way to simulate a real world lighting environment is a modeled HDRI like Vtour does.. it is called Spatial IBL..
and so far there is only on app at the moment..
http://imagemodeler.realviz.com/photomo ... al-ibl.php
sing with me.... la la la... la la la
