Another pair from Olympus E-P1 and Sigma DP2

Another bit of evidence about blown highlights and dynamic range. Here is a birdbath made from a gearshaft and a plowshare.

The Olympus E-P1 image is straight out of the camera, only cropped. Picture Mode was set to Natural, contrast -1, saturation +1, sharpness +2. (Will revise the camera to saturation 0.) Working on the raw file, I could not do better than the OOC to moderate the blown highlights on the gearshaft. The image was shot at -0.3EV; any more EV reduction, and the shadows would be a bigger problem. The dynamic range is not adequate to the lighting on the scene. Sorry, I do not have a filter for the E-P1 kit zoom. The image:

The Sigma DP2 image is extensively post-processed, in particular, brightened the shadows. The gearshaft exhibits glare spots but much less than the Olympus E-P1, and it was easy to reduce it some more in post processing. The result:

If you have wrestled with the luminance curve from ORF raw files, do you have any tips?

Found the birdbath when I walked a ways beyond here: