Originally posted by Kobayashi.K The most recent Camera Codec Pack from Microsoft is here (version 16.4.1970.0624):
Download details: Microsoft Camera Codec Pack (16.4.1970.0624) - Microsoft Download Center
This version is from 9/7/2013 (see Quick Details).
It seems the last 'PEF' camera in the supported list is the K-30 (May 2012). The K5-II and K5-IIs are from Sep 2012.
Pentax itself only supports DNG in its most recent camera's, they seem to have abandoned PEF, the K-50 and K-500 only have DNG. So it 'could' be that Microsoft says, well if Pentax doesn't support PEF why should we. This is only speculation, of course.
My personal view has always been that Pentax is digging a hole for themselves because they are creating a dependency (DNG from Adobe) and by not supporting PEF, 3-rd parties (PP software, Microsoft ..) could abandon it too, and the way back is cut off.
I've been predicting (and hoping) for many years that Pentax would eventually abandon PEF in favour of DNG. I hope they complete the process with the next set of cameras, although I'm not taking a bet!
DNG is the only archival raw file format. The reasons are that it is the only one that has sufficient metadata for a high quality raw conversion to be done by software that doesn't know anything about the specific camera model, and the only one that is formally openly specified, with a freely available source-based SDK, etc.
When Pentax launch a new camera, there will always be a delay before its PEF can be handled properly by any software. But as long as it uses version 1.1.0.0. of DNG, (as all recent Pentax models do), lots of software will handle the camera even if that software was issued before the camera was known about. (The software I'm using for my K-5IIs DNGs was supplied before the camera was launched, and doesn't handle PEFs from this camera).
Adobe have given DNG to ISO for standardisation, but it has been delayed there for years. In the meantime, it is the next best thing to an ISO standard raw file format. (Actually, it is certainly better than
the existing ISO standard raw file format!)