You may find you can handle just one camera
I managed fine with the K20D & lenses.

I would be inclined to have the K10D with 16-45 & 50-135 and put a 50mm/1.4 on the *ist-DS

The flow of a wedding doesn't normally require rapid lens changes. If you know the sequence of events you can normally cope

Matt

...SRS probably have a few in stock at the old price

New Pentax price is £67.99 (splutter, cough, choke)
I think the price was around £16 not so long ago
Matt

There are several commercial watermarking technologies available. Some will watermark the digital image, but you'll lose that when printed. Others will allow even printed (and I've heard even several generation prints) to retain a provable watermark.

However, many of these are pretty expensive and involve subscriptions and the like.

Yes, you could embed something in the low order bits - most likely in the luminance channel of the JPG (rather than the colour), but it'll probably get corrupted when resized or resampled. If it's tough enough to withstand resizing then it's likely that you'll see it too

The trouble is with any unencrypted (or at least non-signed) watermark is that you have no way of proving that you added the watermark afterwards! If you are trying to protect your images from misuse then it will certainly require, at the very least, some form of cryptographic signing process that's embedded in the watermark - so that you can prove that you generated the image and the signature.

Stenography is the wrong word to Google for. Look for "image watermark protection".

EDIT: Here are some links:
http://www.riecks.com/security/
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_watermarking
comparison: http://watermarker.com/how-to-ptotect-digital-images.aspx

HTH!
Matt

Was within a mile of getting the SMC-FA*85/1.4 for £399.
Cash flow prevented me, alas
Still kick myself over that one
Matt

Photoshop includes a proper "Lens Blur" filter - but effective use of it requires creating an accurate focus depth map first. I've used it many times - it's very effective indeed, but it can be very time consuming
Matt

Just a couple of excellent points on the new version:

1) Under the "fine exposure" bias control there is a new "Dodging" control. Have found this excellent for lovely fine portraits.

2) Can batch process in the background, using multiple CPU cores.

3) You can display the contrast control results on the Tone Curve (cool)

4) Output is much improved - you can output to any colour space, and save complete output settings for various uses (e.g. Web output, Full TIFF etc)

Only snag at the minute is there is no Mac version

Although there aren't that many UI differences, the image quality so far seems another step up from SPDS3 Has really made some DA*50-135 portraits leap off the screen

Matt

However, as someone said "In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is!"

Generally the brighter lenses are aimed at pro markets - who expect much from the lens. A case in point is the SMC-DA*50-135. This past weekend I took some family shots at a gathering. The DA17-70 shots were great, but the DA*50-135 candid portraits were utterly, utterly stunning - taken at f/5.6 (even if I say so myself )

With all things it's something of a balancing act I'm happy to up the ISO to get what I want (like a reasonable DoF and a touch more resolution). However, there are also times when f/2.8 at 135mm is fabulous for subject isolation, and even f/4 won't cut it

That said, in line with what you've said, I find I use the DA17-70 in situations where I would normally use the 50mm f/1.4 The resolution on the new zoom is superb, and the versatility just makes it so much more usable.

Difficult question to answer

Matt

BTW, I'm loving the iMac 24"

Just wish I could afford to migrate Photoshop/InDesign/Illustrator at the moment... but it will happen (requires upgrade cost and destruction of previous PC versions).

Took me about a week to get my brain round the switch. Now I am comfortable in both OSs, but prefer OS X so much more

If I never had to see a Windows PC again I wouldn't mind at all now

Have yet to try Aperture. Had a quick go on SPDS3 - that was about the same speed as my fast PC. Aperture has the edge with it's GPU usage. Will have to check out Aperture and Lightroom as well on the Mac. LR licenses are dual-platform BTW

Matt

Ok, here are a few pointers that relate to your questions (and that goes against most of what has been said above ):

1) AdobeRGB is just that (don't worry about differences)

2) For your MONITOR you should NOT select AdobeRGB. You should have profiled your monitor using a hardware calibration device (like a Huey/Spyder etc). THIS should be the monitor's profile. (A very common mistake is to try and assign your working profile to the display, or worse still, calibrate and try and convert and save your images in the monitor's colour space - both big "no nos!")

3) If you are using AdobeRGB you MUST use a colour managed application. Windows has very inconsistent implementations of colour management. Some applications are totally CM'd (Photoshop, Silkypix, Capture One, Lightroom etc), some are partially CM'd (e.g. Firefox when enabled), and some are not CM'd at all (e.g. Windows viewers, Irfanview etc)

4) sRGB is a very narrow colour gamut - but copes with most "consumer" work. AdobeRGB is more suited to CMYK printing. (There are other colour spaces you can work in)



To explain further:
* You capture an image in a colour space (or convert from RAW into a particular colour space).

* You then edit in that colour space, and save the image within that space

* If you need to save a web-version you MUST convert from the working colour space to the sRGB colour space before saving as a JPG

* When printing you can
(a) let the printer driver handle the colour space mapping from whatever space you are using
(b) convert to sRGB or AdobeRGB before you print
(c) let Photoshop handle the mapping from the working colour space to the print colour space (and tell the driver to lay-off colour mapping!). This approach absolutely requires you to have a good ICC/ICM profile for the printer/paper/ink combination.

* While you are editing the image in a CM'd application it will dynamically remap from the working space to the display space - so you can see a "correct" view. Some high-end tools (like full Photoshop) have facilities for gamut-warnings that will display where you have colour clipping issues which could not possibly be shown on the display (since the display usually has a much lower gamut compared to the output)

To answer your questions:
Yes
Don't do that! You must use the profile for your display.

No. Don't do it.
You won't - it's not what the display profile is for (at least not like that)
Windows NEEDS a tool to actually make the profile work on the display (Mac OS X is so much more colour-friendly in this regard )
Big trouble if you tried to assign AdobeRGB to your screen profile. Photoshop would get VERY confused and you'll never get anything right

Hopefully my initial comments will shed enough light to explain my brief answers to your questions!

(To be honest, it's easier to explain face-to-face than write on a forum )
Matt