At the price of the student edition PS is a complete bargain. LR is preferable for some things - non-destructive cropping, for example, and great built-in capture sharpening. But PS allows so much more, with its sophisticated layering, scope for targeted sharpening (including pretty useful native deconvolution sharpening) and local tonal and colour adjustment. And that's not to mention the sheer creative fun of all those layer blending possibilities.

Buy it, you won't regret it.

1440 dpi (eg for Epson printers) is only the printer's screening resolution. In other words, it can lay down dots to that level of resolution, depending on the dither (which is the distribution of coloured dots that gives us the illusion of a continuous gamut).

For Epsons the actual resolution is 360 dpi, or 720 at fine quality, and for HP and Canon it's 300 or 600. But since the dot distribution (dither) is stochastic (chaotic, or non-regular), the actual dpi for any given linear inch of print may depend on image content, colour (some colours require a smaller number of widely spaced dots), profile quality etc.

The number of dots per pixel is, of course, entirely dependent on the file size/print size relationship.

I think the new Olympus Pens are the thing you're looking for. Very cute, metal construction, good sensor, great lenses, nice JPEG engine, plenty of accessories - the optical (non-electronic) VF is a doozy, and comes free with the standard prime.

@dannyh, it's maths, pure and simple. 256 tonal values per channel versus (in practical terms) upwards of 32000. Where's your argument?

Even if you can get your LCD down that far (which is a big if), such a low luminance will almost certainly give you a nasty calibration headache.

We offer printing on canvas as a market necessity, but for me personally, it's just not the greatest medium for photographic printing. The effect is a little crude for my tastes. I print my keepers on either a baryta-based semi-gloss paper such as Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Baryta or the paper I've been experimenting with lately, Canson Platine Fibre Rag (both of which offer extraordinary dMax), or on a matte fine-art paper such as those from Canson, Moab or Hahnemuhle. Although printing on canvas has come a long way, in my opinion the alternatives offer more subtle tonality and finer textural rendition than canvas.

I have a Billingham Hadley Pro and I think you'd struggle to fit those lenses and strobe into it. It's not made for big gear, in my opinion. Perfect for an LX and a couple of primes though!

Don't confuse 10-bit LUT and 10-bit/channel colour depth, they are two different things; for what it's worth, you will need a Fire Pro card (or similar) for the latter, because even though the Radeon chips have the capability, it has been killed in firmware. It's all a bit academic, since 10-bit panels are relatively thin on the ground at this point (the new NEC Spectraviews have them) but, in theory, 10-bits will prevent banding in certain circumstances (say, where there are perfect gradients), including some 3D applications. This is not highly relevant to photography, IMO.

Other things I would add to the discussion so far: PVA panels do have deep blacks, but they also have a problem with viewing angles: the optimum angle is just off centre, otherwise the blacks block up substantially. I used to have a decent PVA display, and I got a crick in the neck from trying to see into the shadows. IPS panels don't have this problem.

Also, contrast ratios of 1000:1 or whatever are irrelevant to most photographers. There is no paper in existence that can reproduce those kinds of ratios (more like 300:1 at best). Once again, an IPS display with its (relatively) low contrast (only relatively - they do look fantastic) is ideal for most photographic applications.

Finally, I would just add that, with respect to John Riley and others, an sRGB workflow is far from best practice in this day and age, when cameras offer at least AdobeRGB and most decent inkjets are capable of matching and even exceeding AdobeRGB in gamut volume. Many people don't understand that when they save their work in the sRGB colour space, it is the richest, most saturated colours they are losing (the ones that won't fit in the constricted sRGB space).

Not all commercial labs use sRGB - we actively discourage it, although we may not quite fit the description of a 'lab' (or 'commercial' for that matter ;p)

I would go for the best monitor you can afford, but I am suspicious of the Spyder3's ability to accurately profile wide-gamut displays (I have one, and it can't cope with my NEC Spectraview SV271 or 2690). So you may need to factor in the cost of a new puck - an i1D2 is a good option.

Kodachrome scans well on Minolta scanners, no need for a special setting. I agree with the suggestions of PEC-12, but a lot also depends on what you use to wipe with - you don't want to leave lint on the slides. Pec Pads are good, although not cheap and slightly clumsy to use. It's also quite hard to clean mounted slides - crud builds up along the edges, no matter how careful you are. Unmounting the slide is the recommended method, but it's a mighty pain!

My feeling is that, ultimately, blowing off excess dust and then using a spotting tool such as the one in Lightroom is the most reliable and versatile solution. The Polaroid plug-in mentioned earlier works well with low-contrast areas such as skies and out-of-focus parts of the image. Areas of detail require manual spotting - I use the Healing or Spot Healing tools in Photoshop, rarely the old-school Cloning tool.