I was showing my D800E to someone yesterday, and he mentioned that one reason why Nikon will have difficulty creating PC lenses as good as the Canon TS-E 24 and 17 is due to the smaller aperture in the camera body, I believe he was saying that this limits the size of exit pupil of the lenses.
So am I right to reframe his conjecture that the smaller exit pupil possible with lenses on a Nikon camera means that lens designs with movements (lets stick to shifts which interest me most) are inevitably going to be compromised. I'm expecting that I've made a variety of technical errors in the way I've framed this, but hopefully the sense of the conjecture comes through.
I've decided to keep both my Canon with its clutch of stellar TS lenses for my commercial architectural work, while adding the D800E, so for me its not a massive deal breaker if Nikon are less able to match this capability of the Canon. It would be great if my friend were wrong, but there are some other benefits to me keeping both kits as well.
Is the exit pupil size always going to place a theoretical and/or practical limit on how great a Nikon PC lens could be? It seems to me it might be, as it would have an effect on the size of the image circle, as well as lots of other effects on distortion, the shape of the field of focus etc.
Some people have mentioned Nikon have a patent for a 17mm lens. My feeling is I wouldn't buy a D800E solely on the expectation that Nikon can at some future date produce a 17mm as good as the Canon one. I think there are a bunch of other reasons for using the D800/E. I'm interested in what our optical experts think about this.