Check out Tamron either 18 ~ 270mm or 16 ~ 300mm depending on your buget.
It is reasonable weight, has a biiiig zoom range and returns good quality pictures.

Not me - lighter may be good but I cannot stand looking at a small electronic screen.
Give me a proper see through lens viewfinder any day!

We have many '2 way' lanes in the Westcountry where even a medium sized family car rubs the hedgerows each side with the mirrors. So the mear thought of meeting a Hum Vee sends shivers down my spine.
Fortunately I have only ever seen one here and that was on a garage forecourt - probably because the owner found he couldn't afford to run it!

Basically a true description of our roads - except the ‘good repair’ bit. Since really bad weather in recent years and councils cutting down on repairs - because there is not enough money (where does the vast sums of road tax go to?) - the state of the roads has become very bad especially if you have a sports type suspension.

The writer was fortunate not to have encountered the ‘Westcountry Suprise’. This comprises walls and rocks hidden in the hedgerows and waiting for the unwary motorist to pull too far over and into the hedge. There are many cars with scraped wings I have seen more than one with ‘I have visited Devon’ painted by the scrape.

There are many software packages that will view dng files. One very good viewer and editor is Faststone - which is freeware.
Someone will probably correct me - judging by the size of the dng image when viewed in fastone, it would appear that a dng image has a 1024 x 683 jpg image embedded in it.

The world appears full of people who see smutt everywhere - in their sick minds.
If they spent more time working and less in trying to see smutt in everything - then we would need less of them and so cut costs.

When is down to yourself. Many pro's use a UWA for landscapes.
Just remember that it has a very large depth of field and that backgrounds will be pushed a long way back so mountains may appear very small compared with what you are viewing. On the other hand - you can include small foreground interest such as a flower and still have the background in focus.
Street scenes can take on a whole new look especially if you deliberately introduce distortion. The distortion with the Canon was much less than expected and LightRoom easily corrects it.

My experience is;
I purchased a Canon 10 ~ 18mm UWA lens last November after lots of deliberation - 'will I use it enough?'.
After putting the lens on the camera it did not come off until my holiday in April. Since then it has spent at least 50% of the time on the camera and many hundreds of shots.
The UWA can put a completely new angle on things and it will enable pictures in tight places that otherwise would not be possible. At 10mm it will give approximately double the field of view compared with 18mm. I was suprised at how good the definition is as shown when I took a hand held picture at about 1/6 secs inside a museum and could read the writing on the information cards.

Contrary to what most other UHH users appear to belive - there is more in life than Photoshop especially if you have better uses for your money.

As you have found - I find the Lightroom heal to lack what I require on difficult eradications, whereas PS Elements usually makes a superb job of even the most difficult eradication job.

Photoshop Elements is reputed to have 80% of the functions of Photoshop and can be purchased for a one off payment - often at a good discount.
It arguably has more functions than the average person would use.

There are also many freeware programs such as Faststone - which my wife generally uses quite satisfactorily - and The Gimp which is supposed to be equal to Photoshop ( with a similar steep learning curve).

No!!
Although you may think otherwise when reading UHH.

Put a top range camera in the hands of a crap photographer and you will still see crap photographs - posiibly at better resolution and IQ but still crap.

Put any camera in the hands of a good photographer and you will see good photographs even if the IQ isn't up to the usual standard.

This is evident when you see photo competitions where pictures taken with a more basic camera have beaten some top of the range cameras.

Look on Youtube at the pro challenge - where a pro is given a cheap camera and told to go out and get some good images, they always manage to succeed.

But of course - human nature being what it is - it is not the individuals fault they have produced rubish pictures , it is the equipment, the processing, the system, anything but the individual.

Unsharp Leica!!!!!!!!! Is the world doomed?

Sounds rather odd - I have a small old Lumax camera to slip into my pocket for times that I do not have the bigun and have always found it very sharp. In fact so sharp that I managed to win 1st prize in a section at a camera club - it was my ambition to show that good pictures can still be taken with a small, cheap camera as so many seem to belive they need lots of expensive equipment in order to take good pictures.

Or to keep the scots in who do want to leave the collapsing european union?

Youtube appears the main 'Go-To' these days as it appears most problems have been sorted by someone and many of the instructional videos are much clearer than the manuals.

Certainly with Photomatix it works well with a 1 shot RAW file and can save a wanted -but poorly exposed - picture from the bin.

And it took 45 years to bring the claim up!
Someone obviously wants to get some quick bucks but the ones who really benefit will be the lowyers as usual.

Peoples panic so gorilla loses.

The last time this happened there was little panic and people soon realised that the Gorilla was protecting the child from the young - and boysterous ones - and all was well.
Of course the child suffered injuries - anyone would falling from a height onto concrete.