Okay Dirk, I'll leave the current test images up.
But wait until Irakly posts his gallery up-loads and writes his review here before jumping to any firm conclusions. I did the first test posted now by myself. But the second round of tests that Irakly and I did together were a bit more comprehensive. Irakly will be writing a review, and has all the images to post soon.
Dirk, I was not suprised that the ND did as well as it did against the Canon 1Ds in terms of image quality. I have found that well lit scenes, like those we were shooting, tend to reveal that doubling the meg count doesn't double the quality. Irakly mentioned that we also shot the test subject with my Canon G3, ( a 4 meg, 1& 1/3" CCD, point-and-shoot), which will serve to illustrate that very point. (we hooked up the G3 to the studio strobes with an adapter and shot the same scene).
Lastly, in all fairness, the Canon is brand new to me. I got it Saturday and we tested it Sunday. Plus, Irakly thought it unfair to use a 50 prime on the Contax and the 24-70/2.8L zoom on the Canon. So we used the 24-85 Ziess on the ND in our second round of tests.
And please remember that this is in studio stuff, not real world, action oriented, varied lighting situations that a 35mm type SLRD is intended for. When shooting in studio, I wouldn't use either of these cameras, but instead my Kodak DCS ProBack on a medium format camera, which proved itself the best image maker against all the cameras tested by a decent margin.
Lets all wait for Irakly's report.