Ideally, the ``imread(..., plugin='fits')`` functionality should auto-load the FITS-plugin---I should see why this is not currently working, because it seems like a bug.

Oh, did someone say FITS plugin? I've been meaning to get back to that (sorry, too busy trying to finish up our Python distribution for astronomy). I believe I had some uncommitted changes after SciPy that we were pending me figuring out how to deal with metadata. I can try to look at this but it might take a couple of days to get to. Please let me know if you have Qs in the meantime (I'm not sure about auto-loading off the top of my head). Cheers, James.