Originally posted by npc Idon't expect any major changes between this and the final firmware.
But we have already seen two different preproduction firmwares, and this is the older, worse one. Tweaking things like ISO calibration, noise reduction, colour calibration, is something that can easily be changed even later. And while I don't know how indicative the firmware numbers are, it seems like 0,3 and 0,4 are still far from 1,0. And since this is preproduction we don't even know if the hardware will be all the same, much less the firmware. Because the point of preproduction is to find faults and fix them before the real product hits the shelves. Excessive banding, noise, are exactly the kind of things that would get worked on, I think, especially since such a large part of a camera review these days is just the sensor performance.
Another thing to consider is the 16MP sensor in K-5IIs. Pentax squeezed more out of the sensor in K-5 than Nikon did out of the same Sony sensor in their D7000 (K-5 had lower minimum ISO and slightly better noise performance, higher DR, if I remember right) . And Pentax continued to build on this sensor, making the K-5IIs - which is even better and was almost revolutionary as a DSLR without AA filter (noticeably sharper than the Nikon AA version of the sensor). So I really doubt that Pentax would take the 36MP sensor and get significantly worse results than Nikon. I expect the differences to be relatively negligible, or for Pentax to be just a hair ahead, since they are doing it a little later (and support technology might have evolved since the first D800, Sony might have tweaked the sensor hardware, and Pentax might have learned from Nikon's use of the same sensor)