They could possibly be referring to www.pentaxforums.com , pentaxslr.eu, or www.pentaxworld.com

If I have correctly interpreted what you have written, you have a slight misunderstanding about RAW files. Apologies if I'm wrong.

RAW files are never edited or changed in any way, by any software, they always remain untouched. From Lightroom to Picasa, RawTherapee to Photoshop, none of these affect the RAW file, be it PEF or DNG. The same is true of the Pentax Utility supplied with your camera.

RAW image files contain what was recorded by the sensor with no in-camera processing applied whatsoever. Any in-camera settings like contrast & sharpness etc. are stored in the EXIF data for later use by editing software, or applied to image files saved as JPG.

Similarly, no RAW editor changes the original RAW image file. Instead, the changes are stored either as a sidecar file, or in a catalogue like Lightroom does.

This and this might help explain.

Incidentally, Lightroom uses Adobe Camera RAW (ACR) as it's core raw converter.

To clarify, the only SMCP-A 50mm 1:2.8 lens AFAIK is the macro. Is this what you have for sale in item 5?

I voted 1 because it looks warmer, not because I think the processing is any better/different.

It is clear to me that the same care has not been exercised to bring out the best of this image using the different editing systems.

The blue hue over the trees makes the whole image look totally unnatural, but I think the sky colour in 2 is much more natural looking than it does in 1.

This is an AF teleconverter which will provide screw driven auto focus even to manual focus lenses. The focussing range is limited, but sufficient.

The image of your dog certainly looks sharp enough to me Mike, thanks.

Sorry to read of your camera issues, but I'm sure that Canon, Nikon, Sony, Olympus, etc. workshops are also busy repairing their users broken cameras. It happens. It's a shame it happened to you on holiday but hopefully you can have it repaired quite easily.

Modern cameras are sophisticated pieces of kit. They sometimes break, but as long as the repair process is smooth and not too expensive, I would judge any future purchase of mine very carefully taking all things into consideration.

Doh.

EXIF data shows 200mm as well as other exposure info, but lens is not recognised.

I'm rather glad I can't make this open day either. I suspect the 560mm would need rather a lot of cleaning after I'd extracted it from where I'm sure my wife would shove it.

One more question for users of the Sigma 70-200mm F2.8 EX DG OS HSM Lens together with Lightroom 4 (LR):-

Is the lens correctly identified by LR and does the actual focal length used get recorded in EXIF data?