I think you can import your Elements catalogue into Lightroom. I vaguely recollect doing that from something like Elements 5 to Lightroom 1.0!

I think Elements and Lightroom make an excellent combination. I do most (99% probably) of my stuff in Lightroom using the raw files and then export to tif for Elements when I want to edit out something more than the Lightroom spot removal tool can cope with - stray hairs, rubbish, political enemies, that kind of thing.

Indeed. I seem to spend a significant portion of my professional life trying to explain things simply enough to be understood, but not so simply they are misunderstood!

It's also not quite accurate! I (having worked on coding image processing software in the past) would describe them as:

Nearest neighbour: Each output pixel in the resized image is the same as the nearest equivalent pixel in the original size image.

Bilinear: Each output pixel is based on a weighted average of 4 pixels in the original image.

Real Zoom: Could be anything really! Certainly it should be using something more complicated than bilinear interpolation based on more of the original pixels - there are many algorithms out there: see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_scaling for starters.

That said, assuming it is really bicubic interpolation is not unreasonable - bicubic interpolation uses a more complicated mathematical function to produce each output pixel from 16 pixels in the original image.

I've got the proper Apple version and all it does is let you import files from the card to the iPad's internal storage, you can't do very much with them in-situ. The built-in Photos app works with PEF files for me, although it obviously isn't much good for editing.

That said, I've not tried doing any editing on the iPad - I just use it for viewing mainly.

I have a Metz 48 AF-1 (or something like that). It's very good, decently priced, although the user interface is quite complicated.

I agree 1.6fps is useless - you might as well just keep pressing the button in single frame mode!

I would find 7fps excessive, but whenever I want continuous shooting I always have the focus mode set to AF.C which slows it down a bit, to probably 4-5 fps (although I haven't measured it). The difference between that and 3fps doesn't seem worth worrying about.

Like Ian, I just leave the camera in high speed continuous mode anyway - which can be bit of a shock for anyone who borrows my camera without realising!

You're right, it's all metadata in addition to the sensor data which doesn't change. AFAIK PEFs can't be changed (at least not by Lightroom/ACR) because the format is closed and owned by Pentax, so development settings have to be stored in sidecar files (.XMP or something I think?). DNG is an open standard published by Adobe, so the various development settings can be written into the actual file, but you also have the option of using a sidecar file if you want to (no idea why, but you can).

Just to make it all as clear as mud, Lightroom doesn't actually write anything into or alongside image files unless you ask it to, because everything is stored in the catalogue database.

Bonus tip: If you "convert to DNG" when importing raw files then you end up with smaller files than either PEF or DNG produced in camera and with no loss of quality - at least, I have found this to be the case with a K100D, K-x and K-5. I believe this is because Lightroom applies a better (and probably more complex) lossless compression algorithm than the camera does.

It sounds to me like the 17ish-50 f2.8 is one of those designs that all the lens companies have cracked, and there aren't really any duff ones. Sort of like 50mm lenses - they've been making them so long it's quite hard to get them wrong!

The 17-50 is excellent. I had a 70-300 though and really didn't like it - horrible purple fringing, big and not particularly sharp. My DA-L 55-300 knocks spots off it.

Ultimately, I think Tamron is like any manufacturer of any kind of product - sometimes they get it right, sometimes they don't. Sigma, Pentax, Ford, Vauxhall, Coca-cola, Pepsi - no-one makes every product perfect, and a lot of it is down to personal opinion.

My Tamron is crazily sharp! It's not without faults (e.g. mine tends to underexpose) but its sharpness is excellent.