Well done in difficult conditions. I love the flames from the exhaust of the . . . Eurofighter?

From the images of yours that I've seen Mike, whatever you are doing works just fine. Time will tell whether a different technique works any better.

Thanks Amin. It's people like you that make it all worthwhile.

No, only when the subject dictates it. Picture the scene that your camera will capture with your eyes, if the area of interest is in lower than the average light for the whole scene, up the EV. Experiment. You have to have a mental picture of the area that your lens sees (and meters for) and what you want to end up with.

With these two images, the bright background has influenced the metering and the captured image. The part that you have decided to keep has thrown those parts away.

As I have said, these images show two fundamental issues:-

1: Both are underexposed so you need to examine your metering technique. If you've used matrix metering, the bright background will have caused the underexposure. Try centre weighted or even spot metering for this scenario.
2: Your subject does not fill the frame (in fact, it's a very small part of the frame) and most of the captured image has had to be cropped away to improve the composition. Solution, either get closer to your subject or use a longer focal length lens.

Either of these situations will make noise look worse than it really is. In combination, you have little chance of eliminating noise at high ISO settings.

I've downloaded the .tiff versions ? ? ?

Observations:
1: Both images are underexposed so noise will be more apparent when the exposure is corrected.
2: You've had to crop a lot of the original away to produce these compositions which will make any noise present even more apparent.

Recommendations:-
1: Expose to the right of the histogram. That is, err on the slightly overexposed (but without blowing out highlights). To help achieve this, set your camera's EV compensation to +0.7 and try it for a while. Adjust for the overexposure in PP. The resulting image from a corrected overexposure is far superior to that from a corrected underexposure.
2: Get closer or use a longer focal length zoom.

I'm confused. When I click on your links Amin, I see a .jpg version. When I right click > Save As, I get a .tiff file.

Wos apnin?

I was going to try processing them in Lightroom, but I need the .PEF's.

The two Pentax 50mm 1:1.2 lenses (original K and A) will facilitate capturing an image in very low lighting conditions. The trade-off is shallow DOF and apparent softness.

A couple of stops down and the images will sharpen up considerably and the DOF will improve.

Your image above looks underexposed anyway. What were the lighting conditions?

Only just over 30 hours to wait . . . so I will, for the official spec. Ricehigh jumps the gun . . . again.

The new Pentax K? camera is being announced on 20th May but that doesn't mean that they will be available to purchase straight away.

If the broken K200D was a grey import Pentax may not agree to it's repair under warranty anyway.

Good news, have fun shopping, but don't limit your purchases to the cheapest supplier. After sales service counts for a lot, especially when/if you have a problem.

You'll get free postage to a UK address from www.srsmicrosystems.co.uk. Call them, ask for Chris, and tell him you are a PU member with loads of cash to spend.