I have both a 12-bit (K-30) and a 14-bit (K-5 IIs), so I thought I would offer some help. The immediate thing that came to mind was the sharpness difference of the two could have been an issue with the perceived noise. So then I came up with the following idea - take a shot of the same scene with the same lens on both cameras, and give 100% crops of the out of focus areas. This is my dead K-5 (waiting for Jenny's 5 year old brother to have his birthday so I can give it to him - he loves cameras and loves playing with them. With it comes a $10 manual lens that lets him look through the viewfinder and twist the focus ring
) on my bed and some sunlight coming through the window. The K-5 IIs is a hair out of focus because I "focused and recomposed" on both shots, but apparently a bit too much on the K-5 IIs. It's my fault, not that of the camera. Anyway, here they are. Top row is resized to 795x1200
FA 77 Limited, 1/2000s, f/1.8,
ISO 8000
The crop shows highlights, midtones, and severe shadows/darks.
I don't see any difference.
-Heie