16-bit RAW in K10D?

According to <u><A href = http://snipurl.com/wk56>a posting on this photozone.de

thread</a></u>,

 

<p>

 

<i><blockquote> According to the chief editor of the swedish magazine Kamera &

Bild, Pentax Sweden has said that Pentax decided the 11th of September that the

new K10D would output 16 bit RAW files, not 12 bit. The current pre-production

models has a firmware with 12 bit RAW, but the production model will have a new

firmware supporting 16 bit RAW. </blockquote> </i><p>

Yep. I can see this helping with dynamic range for RAW files at least.

Well, now there's an alleged clarification in that thread stating that coding isn't finished on dealing with 16-bit, so the current 12-bit firmware will be in the cameras sold, and a firmware update some time in the future will upgrade RAW saves to 16-bit.

So with file sizes already being significantly larger than those on my Canon 5D, the RAW files are going to be even larger come the next firmware. Ouch! Owning both systems is going to be weird when the smaller files are taking up more memory space on the cards.

I think one of the things they'd be working on is a decent compressed RAW format....