A few more from the Great Victoria Desert.

[loose cannon]

Struggled a bit trying to find an interesting composition but the colours were astonishing.

Little bit of fog about and there had been a low level fire so the spinifex was a lovely combination of black and green/yellow, add the white from the gum trees and the reddest soil I've ever seen and I simply had to capture something of the scene to bring home.

Captured about 400km east of Laverton on the Anne Beadell track.

[seaslug]

That red coming through really lifts the shots.

[Ironwood]

Looks out of this world with the red dirt. Would have been a sight to behold, thanks for showing us.

[Alan]

Amazing colour in the dirt.

They seemed a bit dark and lacking detail, so I thought I'd open them in PS to have a play - but the files that opened in PS were beautifully detailed and brighter. So something is happening to your (and our?) photos in translation - or it's a fault at my viewing end?

This is just a copy of your photo and reposted - just to see what happens



edit - looks much lighter now on my monitor, but still nowhere as detailed (it looks almost over sharpened) as in the copied PS file

[loose cannon]

Yes, they have lost something during upload Alan.

Because I'm processing on a lappy I visited a friend who has a 21" imac and had a look at these images(and many more) on their monitor just to check how I was going with exposure, colours etc.

Must say I'm pretty happy now with my 17" lappy screen, not too shabby at all compared to the imac and certainly good enough for processing RAW files with confidence.

At time of capture the colours were extraordinary, almost other worldly and I feel the images, as processed, show that. I've hardly touched them in photoshop as there was no need.

Quite disappointed in how they present on the forum but have no answer as to why.

They are slightly dark and deliberately so. Captured just after sunrise with a foggy sky I was reluctant to lift the exposure as I wanted to maintain the mood.

The Sigma DP2 has no AA filter and the sharpening always has to be dialed back in pp. Because of the foreground I could perhaps bring it back another notch, any images with grass, spinifex or the like can appear over sharpened.

The Siggy RAW files are huge, it's a >30 megapixel camera and delivers incredible levels of sharpness and detail that needs to be tamed at times.