Amin why not a studio flash set most of the time they're cheaper then the flashguns and they don't run on batteries

Yes you can turn them, i believe all do to be honest.
It's worth to get the coated ones. i've a b+w pol mrc for my macro and it's on it 24/7 so the bit more protection and repelend against dirt and moist is welcome.

Yes that seems to be right.
It will become a 180mm lens doubling your magnification but you will hold you close focus range so it will become an 1:1

When you have CS2 you also have Adobe camera raw, it can opens the raw file directly and you can do many things with it. The same things you can do in capture 1 or silkypix, for example.

I suggest you import the photos from the card with camera raw, if i'm correct it can automaticly do that and convert them into DNG. DNG is also an raw file so you won't lose any data but it's higher compressed and it can be opend with more programs. DNG can for example be opend by CS2 without limitations that you have with some other files.

When you're done with the photo I would keep the DNG since it holds more info as tiff but save as tiff or loseless compressed JPG when you won't make any changes to it.
JPG isn't as good as tiff but it saves space on your harddisk and the quality is comparable and you won't see it.

No it wouldn't damage the camera or the lens.
The camera is just unable to read the aperture value when using the apeture ring so if you don't enable that it would simply refuse to make a photo since it doesn't have an aperture value.

They have put this option on for the newer lenses so as the DA, they don't have an apeture ring so when the camera doesn't get the info it means the lens is not correctly mounted.

edit: typo, it was late

Here is a good read about filters and I believe most will agree link

Here is someone who hates Canon so he's trying to break a lens link
Only with the end of the hammer he created some damage on the lens.

What John said is also true though but I believed many have an anti-scratch coating now. Will send Pentax a message about that and see what they will say.

My flash have two sets of varta pro 2700mAh. The flash goes through one set of them in a month but charge them when I get the change, so they sit in my bag charged for a month before they see any use and then even they last a month in the flash as well. Will test them to find out how many flashes I get out of them

My stephdad use GP batteries in his P&S camera but they will only last a week before they're depleted.
Brand does matter and also a good charger is important.

[quote:3496ace15f="Mannesty]Sanyo Eneloop batteries have a very very low self discharge rate and are claimed to maintain 80% of their charge after a year of non-use.

They are however of a lower capacity at 2000maH than the more commonly available 2700maH NiMh batteries. In practice this makes very little difference.[/quote]The diffrence is 35%, I don't call that minor since it means you can take 35% more photos if they don't decharge that is.

It's nice they don't lose 80% in a year but they lose the most in the first week/days. They tested 2 week charged Varta pro 2700 and they lost 500mAh. That's after two weeks and they still have more energie then freshly charged enloops do and the more they deplete the slower the depleting goes, they might probable still be more powerfull then enloops after 3 weeks.

It really depends on your shooting then which battery is better.
If go through your batteries in 3 weeks, good NiMH batteries might be the better option if not Enloops are probable the better ones.

The sky is better there and the birds give it something extra but I like your first photo better since the castle came out better in there in my view.
If there wasn't the castle on the leftside in the second, I might have liked that one more maybe.

I believed that the Tammy 18-250 was regarded better on most sites I readed, maybe it might be worth to test that one also.

I had the Pentax DA 18-250 but sold it to finance another lens, I do miss it sometimes. You have one lens that can do it all but it's no where super but that's the price you pay to have such a handy lens.

What Darkmunk said is also very true.
For examplpe, if you use the 50-200 a lot, you might find the DA 55-300 a far better upgrade. That lens is seen as the best lens in that range and will most likely preform better then the 18-200 or other such lenses.
If you don't use the long end a lot maybe a 17-70 lens would fill your needs.

Going a bit of a site-track now but do someone has a link about how effective those coatings are against scratches?