I knew one girl that actually knows stuff, takes nice pictures, etc. luckily for her she's no longer working for them now.
On the other time I was bored enough to pop in to Jessops to have a look at filters over there, one of the older guys working there asked me what I need, told him I'm looking for graduated ones (gray one especially), they haven't got any of those of course and guy replied that these are no longer needed and manufactured because "all those effects you can get in photoshop" .
On some other day I walked into Jacobs, apart of their efforts to sell me some C, I keep asking for some Pentax stuff they had on display, that confused two of them enough to tell me they will call "Pentax expert", guy turned up confused not less than others, his expertise was looking through Pentax catalogue .

Just wondering whether this corrected recording stability with sdhc cards was the issue I had here:
https://www.pentaxuser.com/forum/topic/k20d-continous-shooting-and-surprise----1...

Doesn't look much like a starling to me (here's a starling: https://www.pentaxuser.com/photo/user-6093/starling-5978).
It could be a young blackbird, but you said it was bigger (or maybe a big young one ).
Steve, use this nice tool to find out:
http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdidentifier/

I'm not a fan of taking tens of pictures by one finger press on shutter and never really used it (apart of some testing), but today I had a perfect subject to actually let camera shoot at max.
So, I got my subject in place, shutter pressed, got to the point where buffer has got full and camera slows down a bit, took few more pictures depressed shutter and pressed it again to take few more pictures after some 2 seconds (camera was still saving previous ones, and was taking pics on a slower speed (buffer full like).
Not suspecting problems, have moved pics on the PC and... Camera saved 18 PEFs (PEF was is use) all having sizes between 15.9MB to 16.5MB (so pretty good).
Tried to open them in Irfan and: 7 of them display only embedded thumbnail, tried to open them in pentax photo browser and ufraw, but only got message saying that file is corrupted or software was crashing. Another 3 pictures were showing only part of frame from 15% to 40% (ish) lines (from top to bottom). Remaining 8 seems to be ok.
Memory card was Extreme III SDHC, 1/400sec, 800ISO. I did one more test later one, but it was darker and shutter speed was slower and all pics were saved correctly.

I did write about it in some topic here, can't find it now though .
Problem you are seeing is related to noise-signal ratio.
Simply in dark conditions the number of photons hitting sensor produces lower number of eletrons (that in bright conditions) which is nearer to noise level, hence noise is more pronounced.
Simple example could be, imagine you are listening to quiet music (like: poor light), so lower level of energy (like: photons) hits your ears (like: sensor), at the same time you have some background noise (like: noise produced by sensor and electronics) which is only a bit quiter than music, obviously background music would be a bit distracting.
Turning volume up (like: good light) "covers" backgroud noise and it is no longer distracting (like: less noisy image).

There is no reciprocity in the way you describe it above, as properly exposed dark scene is darker than a scene in good light anyway, so it delivers (to the sensor) less light anyway than properly exposed bright scene. To get similar level of light on the sensor in poor conditions, you would have to boost exposure much more than dictated by "proper" exposure (what would produce other problems, related to veryyyy long exposure).

You can try something, on relatively low ISO (100, 200) take 3 pictures (raw) of the same scene, first underexposed by some 2 stops, second with correct exposure, third overexposed by 2 stops. Then develop all pictures, add 2 stops in your raw converter to the first picture, don't change exposure of the second image, lower exposure of the third image by 2 stops. So all pictures at the end should be exposed more-less at the same level, now compare noise on all pictures, diference should be clearly visible.

Nice stuff Rob, ... envy hehe.
Last one shows how interesting air-to-air one could take from there.

Lens vignetting, mine 18-250 shows the same.

Looks good Rob, as far I can see besides this thingy in the middle ..., grats.

Actually to be precise all PEF files from different cameras should be the same (in terms of file format), as PEF is used by Pentax cameras, so it is only Pentax cameras can make PEF file, so all should have the same format* .
Of course file format for RAW files produced by cameras will differ from brand to brand.

* there may be different versions of the PEF format.

Can't find any info about that NEC.
However found some distributors for Eizo and NEC i India, you may try to ask them for some pricing, but I guess it may be rather expensive, check here:
http://www.necindia.in/m_local_dist.html

http://www.rsg.in/Directors.html
(look there at guy named Gulshan Pahwa), and here you have more contact details for them/him:
http://www.eizo.com/contact/index.asp

Again, you may find these to be quite expensive...

General thought around is that Lacie is just a rebranded NEC .