To be clear, I never recommended the D800 *over* the D800E as I believe they each have their place. I only indicated that with a little extra work in post, you could get the D800 to the same practical level of performance as the E. What it requires is roughly 30% more amount on a high-frequency capture sharpening routine (0.4 to 0.6 pixel radius at low threshold ~ 1); AND increasing clarity about 6 to 8 points to subdue the slight AA filter veiling.
I am meeting with Guy in a few weeks and will play with some Sony raw files and see what capture sharpening settings I think make sense, and then share them here. Or in the meantime, if somebody wants to send me a well-captured raw file with significant areas of high detail, I can look at it over the weekend. It might actually be a good exercise for this group of owners -- we could have a processing contest of sorts to help each other understand what works and what won't for their needs.
PS: Just to clarify my stance re the D800, I actually still own one of each body and use dedicated capture adjustment sets for each camera. My personal take is that for 90% of all work, they are essentially identical in practical application. There are perhaps 5% of the time the D800E is going to be superior and 5% of the time the D800 is going to be superior, but in either case the amount of superiority while seen subtly at the pixel level is virtually insignificant in even the largest print save for subtleties in the final image undertone. Generally speaking, I use the D800E for landscape, architecture and art-repro work and I prefer the D800 for people anything, B&W conversions and long tele work. But as a practical matter I could easily shoot everything with one, I'd just have a difficult time deciding which choice it would be