Shooting under harsh sunlight-Processing challenge

[pwnage101]

Hmm, a neutral density filter should not be used just because the sun is too bright. Looking at the exif in the image, the ISO could be turned down 1 stop, the shutter speed was still at 1/800, and the image looks to be taken during the brightest time of the day anyway.

or are you saying things get even brighter

[arith]

I didn't see that; I must have misread it because I thought it was 1/8000 at 100 iso. Can't imagine why I thought that. However if you want a wider aperture you might like to use an ND if nothing else works. I love shooting at this time of day, it presents challenges and a unique look, I like it even if no-one else does. cheers

[Pictus]

I mixed 3 different raw conversions in Photoshop, 1 SilkyPix for color and 2 from Rawtherapee for detail.
Here the full size JPEG + a small PSD with the layers http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4686872/alis.7z
Can unpack with 7-zip http://7-zip.org/ or WinRAR http://www.rarlab.com/ or Izarc http://www.izarc.org/

[arith]

Looks good to me.