  The coupling of the manganite stripe phase to the lattice and to strain has
been investigated via transmission electron microscopy studies of
polycrystalline and thin film manganites. In polycrystalline \PCMOfiftwo a
lockin to $q/a^*=0.5$ in a sample with $x>0.5$ has been observed for the first
time. Such a lockin has been predicted as a key part of the Landau CDW theory
of the stripe phase. Thus it is possible to constrain the size of the
electron-phonon coupling in the CDW Landau theory to between 0.04% and 0.05% of
the electron-electron coupling term. In the thin film samples, films of the
same thickness grown on two different substrates exhibited different
wavevectors. The different strains present in the films on the two substrates
can be related to the wavevector observed via Landau theory. It is demonstrated
that the the elastic term which favours an incommensurate modulation has a
similar size to the coupling between the strain and the wavevector, meaning
that the coupling of strain to the superlattice is unexpectedly strong.
