Hi,
If you are
satisfied with your Leica than you obviously don't
need a Nikon. You may also consider that a Leica M10 may show up, sooner or later.
Regarding lenses it's more complex. I'd say there is little doubt Nikon also has quite a few very good lenses and there are Zeiss lenses for Nikon. Some of the Zeiss lenses are said to be very good (the 100/2 macro, the 21/2.8 and possibly the 24/2).
Now, the Nikon D800 has twice the resolution compared to the Leica and that would give a noticeable improvement, as long as the lenses hold up and the better lenses will do that quite nicely. The Nikon comes with either an OLP filter or without.
I recently found a test shot suitable for measuring MTF on the Leica M9. I compared it to Sony Alpha 900 image from the same site. The M9 has much higher MTF at Nyquist, meaning it will have significant aliasing, which means both fake contrast and fake detail, both can make an image perceivably better. The M9 reaches Nyquist around 3500 while the Sony is limited around 4000. If you compare MTF at 3500 the Sony and the Leica are pretty close. So the Leica will produce better fine detail contrast at the pixel level, but the Sony will match it if both are enlarged to the same size.
I have not seen any decent raw images from the Nikon D800/D800E and even if I had I would need a new version of ACR/Lightroom to analyze them. But I'm pretty sure that they will outperform the M9 and the Sony I have comfortably.
Erwin Puts has comparison images from the M9, S2, Nikon D3X and Sony Alpha 900 (and he ranks M9 last of the four):
http://imx.nl/photo/leica/camera/page176/s2part4.htmlD3X:
M9:
A900:
So my guess may be that the leading 24 MP cameras can match Leica M9 if they use the best lenses and I'm pretty sure this will keep up with the next generation.
My expectation is that if you can make an excellent 30x40 print with the M9 than you will be able to make a 60x40 print of similar quality with the Nikon D800e.I recently made a similar evaluation of three genaration of Sony cameras, all APS-C, namely the Alpha 700, Alpha 55 and the Alpha 77. It seems that resolution increases linearly with the square root of MP on those cameras, indicating the lenses keep up well with sensors. Corner performance may be another thing. The Alpha 77 would have 54MP at full frame, by the way.
Regarding color, it depends mostly on processing but also on the CGA (Color Grid Array). I presume that the design of the CGA is a compromise. If the RGBG filters in the CGA are steep the camera may reach more saturated color but may have problem with differentiation of colors. I guess that some CGA design are optimized for color separation and some others for high ISO.
I have seen a pair of test shots by Miles Hecker where he made pictures with his Pentax 645D and a friends D3X, he even posted the raw files. To me those two cameras produced different colors and I couldn't get them to match in Lightroom. I don't know which was the correct color but I preferred the Pentax 645D for sure. The Pentax uses a Kodak sensor and I guess that the CGA could be similar to the Leica. See this discussion:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=50977.0Best regards
Erik
Sounds like an odd sort of question but there is method in my madness. In a sense the question is hypothetical but I wonder why we need 36MP when Leica can do such a good job with 18MP
Now I have noticed that the Leica files can be scaled up to quite large sizes very cleanly. I am thinking that this is because (a) there is no AA filter and (b) the Leica lenses deliver extremely sharp high contrast images.
Purely in terms of seeing a large sharp print why would I need a D800E? I know that there are other characteristics such as colour and look which might dictate a preference for a particular camera's output. There are also considerations associated with long lenses (not good on rangefinder cameras) and the need for live view and so on which would affect a decision. In fact I have already ordered a D800E for just those reasons but not on the grounds of image quality or file size.
I also use a Hasselblad H4D60 - nice camera with lovely colours - but I find myself picking up the M9 whenever I can use it in preference to the Hassie.