That's how brilliant the Sigma 19mm is

I am shooting in manual mode, but in a "fool-proof" way: i use bracketing and then i further increase the EV-difference between the three pictures in adobe camera raw (ACR). ACR is the most important tool for me, here is where I apply global effects vas well as selective tonal and contrast enhancements using the brush tool. Finally i stack the three enhanced images in photomatix, where I apply some less or more subtle fusion or tone mapping, just a touch of it to give the resulting pic some oomph without turning it into an artefact. That's how most of my pics are generated and processed, including the one you have linked.

However, this kind of postprocessing heavily relies on the quality of your raw files. I can't do that at all with my jpegs taken with the Nokia N8 (which I carry around all the time and take quite a few of pics with it) because they lack that "deep information" that a great APS-C sensor with a tack-sharp lens manage to bury into the RAW files.

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