Take some photos of interesting skies that you can place in your photo instead of the blown one. Cheating but it can be effective.

You can batch process Raw files in Elements.
Open all the files you want to process by ctrl clicking them, then in Adobe Raw click on apply to all at the top of the left hand side where all the photos are. Anything you do to the first photo will be applied to the others.

You don't lose the raw file but you do lose the unprocessed raw file. Save all your raw files somewhere else before you process them.

I recommend the Missing Manual as an excellent guide, and if you can stand their style have a look also at Scott Kelby & Matt Kloskowski's book, which gives some great work arounds and tips..

It will be interesting to see how Olympus do this year - they have several new models planned for this year, regardless of the world financial climate. Also to see how Nikon do. Canon and Sony of course have plenty of other sources of income -all very sensitive to the financial downturn it's true.
To be honest I'd rather have Pentax profitable and alive at the end of the year, with no new models, than producing several new models and going bust.
We never felt the need to update cameras every year in the film age so waiting another year shouldn't be so painful now.

You have to set AF with the remote in the custom setting menu otherwise you can't do it.

Does anybody know when Sigma are going to have these available?
I am tempted to buy an 18-250 as a travel lens as it would cut down a lot on weight to lug around with me.
Since the Pentax one has been discontinued and the Tamron version is thin on the ground I am hoping Sigma get this out before the end of April, especially as theirs has HSM.
There is no sign of it on SRS, even to pre order, but I remember reading somewhere that Sigma promised it for April.

http://tinyurl.com/bokcbu for a link to the Sigma site

Thanks Ken!

That assumes people read the manual Stefan

Ephotozine have one - click on shop above and then on on Pentax Misc accesories.

SRS also have one, which is more expensive.

There are plenty on e-bay too I believe.

Or go for a wired remote - a generic one is just as good as the Pentax one, and one of the Canon ones also works with Pentax.

Even better post the link here on the forum so we can all see it

Canada is on the list. We have family and friends there, in Newfoundland, the Toronto area and in the Canadian Rockies in some tiny town stuck in the middle of nowhere, so we are hoping and planning eventually to make a really long trip across Canada, probably partly by train, since VIA offers some good ticket deals for seniors (like my other half!). This time we will stick to the US I think. There is enough to see in those two states to fill our three weeks, and a few more weeks besides.

Yes, Portland is an international airport with direct flights from Amsterdam - hence our decision to fly in there rather than Seattle. Sadly an open jaw flight costs a lot more or we may ave flown out of Seattle.

I've ordered a ND4 filter btw.