I processed both files in Adobe Camera RAW using identical settings: Sharpening at 70 / 0.5 / 36 / 10, Luminance and Colour Noise Reduction both set to zero, and the Process to 2012 with the Adobe Standard profile. These settings were chosen to reveal the differences in sensor quality and isolate them from in-camera processing. The high degree of sharpening with a small radius enhances the finest details without causing undesirable artefacts, while the zero noise reduction unveils what's really going on behind the scenes.

If you're viewing this page in isolation I'd urge you to have a copy of my Nikon D800 JPEG quality results open at the same time - and just to be extra helpful, you can click this link to open them in a new window. Image processing can be a very personal thing, but I'd say both the D800 and 5D Mark III benefit from the RAW workflow described above. Both are displaying very crisp fine details without any undesirable haloing artefacts.

The Nikon D800 JPEGs already looked pretty good in my opinion, but now enjoy a slight boost in crispness for a preferable overall result. But it's the 5D Mark III which really benefits from this approach RAW processing, losing their over-contrasty and slightly artificial-looking default style in favour of something much crisper and cleaner.

Of course by processing them with the same settings and choosing Adobe's profile rather than the camera's own, the image style is unsurprisingly very similar on this page, and thanks to that you can really concentrate on differences in detail. As you might expect, the 50% greater pixel count of the D800 has allowed finer details to be resolved, most noticeably in the distant buildings, although it may not be as significant a difference as you'd expect.

So it's another win for the D800 in terms of detail, but the 5D Mark III isn't far behind and I hope you'll agree the Canon image really benefits from the RAW workflow described here. For completeness, you can scroll down to see a comparison of the D800's RAW file down-sampled to its Medium resolution setting to roughly match the pixel count of the 5D3. Alternatively you can dive straight into my high ISO comparisons with the first of my Nikon D800 noise pages, starting with a JPEG comparison with the Canon. I'll also include RAW and down-sampled versions later on and if you'd prefer to jump straight to these, just scroll up to the results contents box.