digikam and EXIF

[Itay <debian@itayf.fastmail.fm>]

Hi,

I am new to this list, digikam, and digital photography.
I experience few, perhaps related, problems.

1. The metadata in exif and makernote are lost after transforming a 
photo.  (Tested on rotating and resizing.)

2. After starting digikam, my terminal gets cluttered with warning 
such as this

<output>
Warning: Size 5291 of Exif.Nikon3.0x0091 exceeds \
  4096 bytes limit. Not decoded.
</output>

 Q: How can I cause digikam to copy the relevant metadata
    into the the transformed photo?
    Or should I use external tool (exiftools)?
 Q: Should I worry because of the warnings I get?
    Even if not  - how to avoid them?

I use a Nikon D300.
Photos are recorded as the largets possible tiffs.

Versions:
  digikam       : 0.9.4
  kde           : 3.5.10
  libtiff4      : 3.8.2-11

Thanks,
Itay