All I want to do is capture what I see with my eye and produce the same or very close match
That could be the very problem. The Camera doesn't 'see' the world in the same way we do.
You have a bike in your avtar....think SMIDSY... it's not that the car driver doesn't 'see' us when they pull out; it's that they haven't 'perceived' us... our brain's take the image we see, and the diddle it in our head, to crate what we 'perceive'.. it's what magicians rely on, and how optical illusions work.
Now as far as SMIDSY goes; dealing with a fairly complex, dynamic, changing 'scene', our brain tries to filter the 'picture' and delver a 'perception' that is 'simplified' and easier to interpret; and two ways 'Perception' tries to 'short-cut' processing every detail the eye actually sees is, memory patching and pattern recognition. Rather than telling you what your eye actually 'sees'; your perception merely scans the scene, and where it recognises a familiar patter,or something it's seen before, rather than relaying what the eye is beholding; it returns what's in the memory, NOT what is in front of our eyes.
In SMIDSY case, the familiar 'pattern' is CAR.. and we DON'T get seen on a motorbike, because we are an 'anomaly', that cant be patched in from memory very easily, so perception, 'ignores' us to deal with later, when it has more time to fill in the detail; mean while, car driver's 'need' is to make a decision on whether to pull out or not; they want a 'gap'; perception is filling the sketch with nice easy to manage memory images of cars, so SMIDSY 'perceives' 'car' or 'no-car', and 99 times out of 100 we make up less than 1% of road transport), 'no-car' = 'GAP'.. and while perceptions still 'resolving' the scene, that is 'enough' to make the decision whether to pull out on... or at least it seems to be 99 times out of 100!
Similar thing happens with cyclists; there was a study some years ago, due to the inordinate umber of times, police and insurance reports contained the statement that the push-bike 'just leaped off the pavement in front of me!' I live between three schools, and two parks, and for how frequently BMX-Bandits run the gauntlet accross my bows, I don't find the suggestion at all strange, that push bikes 'leap off the pavement' front of moving vehicles; BUT, study was concerned that wasn't just kids on mountain bikes; and sited incident of a District nurse doing her rounds being knocked off after apparently bunny-hopping infront of a car, off the pavement.. unlikely. Back to this perception thing, and what the study suggested was that a cyclist, moving at a pedestrian pace, and about pedestrian size and shape.. 'Perception' decided it was a pedestrian, and filling in the sketch with 'memory', put in a pedestrian, NOT a cyclist.. BUT.. pedestrians belong on the pavement, don't they? So the 'Percieved' image is of a pedestrian, placed two foot over on the pavement, not a cyclist on the road.. and as long as that cyclist isn't an imminent 'issue', the error is't corrected.. IS corrected as the car gets to within striking distance, and that object n the peripheral vision gets some extra attention, and AH! CYCLIST.. and perception kicks back in, and puts a memory image into the scene where it belongs, ad like a bit of bad continuity editing in a movie, pedestrian suddenly becomes cyclist who 'leaps off the pavement' in front of the car!
Which is all very interesting and totally NOT about cameras... BUT, the camera has no 'Perception'. It doesn't colour what we perceive by what we expect to see, or what we have seen before; nor does it colour what it sees with other sensations, like smell, or sound....it JUST 'sees'..
All I want to do is capture what I see with my eye and produce the same or very close match
Flip the proposition; rather than trying to capture what you 'Perceive'.. try and perceive what the camera 'sees'.....
"North, South, East, West, check the corners, THEN the rest"
Take your eye off the 'subject'; look up, and down, left and right; give the WHOLE scene equal at attention; our 'perception' is 'centre weighted', take the time to look at what is around what we are looking at, that our perception is probably not showing us in 'full detail', but the camera WILL. The come back to the subject.... you smell Donuts, you will 'See' Donut stand.. but what does it ACTUALLY say on the sign? 'Hot-Dogs'? It COULD.. might just say 'SNACKS'.. but fleeting glance, yo would SWEAR o your LIFE what you 'saw' was a donut stand.. except you didn't... you SMELLED a Donut Stand, and 'perception' the decided THAT must be what you 'saw'.. so look again, and again, and again, and FORCE perception to show you what you REALLY see, ot what it THINKS you see... and THEN, your photo's will start looking more like what you saw...
Camera is already capturing what you were looking at... its YOU who aren't seeing what's in the picture
