Thanks Luke...I'm looking forward to delivery of my 800e next Tuesday...have some good glass here waiting for it! Eleanor
Compared in 24x36mm sizes, the D800E sensor will beat the IS180 sensor hands down. There is no special character to the CCD or the CMOS, and as much as Phase One tries to improve on the CCD, the read noise is much higher than for the CMOS Exmor.
Where you get the benefits is in the extra sensor real-estate, coupled with the correspondingly higher number of pixels. In typical applications, when the IQ180 output is downsampled to print size, there are secondary effects in (i) noise reduction, (ii) anti-aliasing, and (iii) increased dynamic range per print pixel.
I think you will find the D800/E to be very smooth. The read noise at base ISO is negligible, yielding very clean blacks and smooth gradations. With good profiling, the colors are outstanding.
