Trying to light a chrome lighting fixture with lightbulbs

[unorthodoxdesign1]

Hello All!

I'm a lighting designer currently working on a render for this light. I can't get the lights (have tried area, point lights, and emissive material) to properly light the interior of the shade. If I turn up bloom a fair bit I can get the halo glow I like around the bulbs, but then the intensity is way to high. The bulbs (light producing part) are a separate piece inside of the glass enclosure.

I would like to be able to set the intensity to a believable level so the glass isn't totally white (like in a real bulb) and the interior of the shade is lit properly. I tried making the bloom extent really big and turn down the intensity.. but still not very realistic. Is the glass enclosure stopping the ray bounces from hitting the outer chrome enclosure?

I have a trial version as of now.. trying to justify it to the higher ups by showing them a sexy REALISTIC render. Help would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers!

[NDenekamp]

Unfortunately the trial version won't do this, but in the licences version you can save a 16 bit tiff file that will contain a lot more levels between dark and light. in Photoshop you can then tone map the HDR tiff into an 8 bit image that will likely show a more realistic image of how you would perceive the fixture with your eyes.