Sigma DP2: RAW is Where It’s At

One of the best parts about shooting with the DP2 is that you get wonderful RAW files to work with in post. In the Sigma world, these files are  given an .X3F extension, and typically are around 13mb in size. As we’ve mentioned, with the latest update to Lightroom (2.4) and Camera Raw (5.4), you can now edit these files without using Sigma Photo Pro, but I’ve gotten used to the Photo Pro workflow since getting the DP2, and usually prefer it’s results for the rough edits. For the real keepers, I’ll finish them up in Photoshop, to add toning and selective corrections.

For the most part the DP2 is very impressive with its dynamic range capabilities and manages both highlights and shadows quite well. Shooting in RAW provides further room, I’m finding a good deal of recoverable data in “blown highlights”, so like most DSLR cameras, I’m exposing more to the right, almost deliberately blowing just a bit of the highlights. Then in post you recover the highlights while giving yourself more room in the shadows where excessive fill would introduce more image noise.

To demonstrate this workflow, I’ve got an example from a recent trip to “The Mount”, where the author Edith Wharton resided in the early 1900’s. In this shot the relatively bright, but overcast sky got blown out. In this first shot, I took a screen grab of what happens when a file is first opened in Sigma’s Photo Pro. This drab preview looks quite similar to the view on camera’s LCD, and I assume it’s a JPEG preview of the actual RAW file.

It takes a couple moments for Sigma Photo Pro to “process” the image. Once the progress bar completes you arrive at the following:

The saturation has come back and the “sunny” white balance is now reflected in the image. On the other hand the blown highlights in the sky remain. Sigma Photo Pro provides some basic slider type adjustments to edit RAW files, including the “highlight” slider. Moving it to the left recovers the blown highlights entirely:

Notice we’ve got all the highlights back. That’s about what the sky looked like earlier in the day (it eventually cleared up), but we’ve lost some punch from the image. So the next step was to add some contrast, boost the saturation a bit, and sharpen, all still inside Photo Pro. Finally a trip into Photoshop to straighten things out, and here’s the much improved image:

original size

In conclusion, shooting with DP2 is nice, but shooting RAWs with the DP2 is much nicer.

get the Sigma DP2 at Amazon, B&H Photo

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1. 

   Owen says:

   July 6, 2009 at 3:02 pm

   Good article, thanks. I’m waiting for my DP2 it’s in the post

   reply
2. 

   Patrick says:

   July 6, 2009 at 7:41 pm

   Owen,
   that’s exciting, be sure to post back when you get it….

   reply