Hi all... I joined this forum specifically to post on this thread. I'm an amateur photographer who's worked as a colorist in a high-level video post production facility for about 30 years and I've been using an M9 for about 1.5 years. I like it for its size and mechanics. Before getting it, I shot with an M4, a Hexar RF and a Rollei TLR.
After developing both DNGs with ACR 5.7 using the default sharpening, I converted the M9 image to B&W in PS CS4 using a B&W adjustment layer, then superimposed it on the MM image and aligned the two. After using adjustment layers to try to match the appearance of the images more closely, I printed small prints (9"x6") and 100% crops of each using an Epson 3880, Imageprint and Ilford Galerie Gold Fibre Silk paper.
Here are some observations:
1. On screen, the MM image seems clearly sharper than the M9 and that difference is most apparent when viewing at 200 or 300 percent.
2. After printing I studied the prints both with and without a loupe and then showed them to my wife, who was the art director at a record company for many years. She has been looking at great photos, both as prints and on screen, for all those years. She's not particularly technical and is definitely not a pixel peeper. She was not able to tell which was which. In the printed 100% crops, the sharpness difference was visible to me but not startling. When looking at portions of the image, she sometimes believed that the M9 print appeared sharper because those areas of the M9 print had stronger local contrast.
What I got from this exercise: Point 1 above indicates to me that MM files might easily be printed larger than M9 files. For example, I sized the files from 240 to 480 dpi using Alien Skin Blow Up 2, which would be about a 30x20 print at 360 dpi. This may sound silly but it seems to my eye that the MM file up-rezed in this way appears about as sharp as the M9 file at its native resolution. So, MM may mean very much larger prints. But I don't print that large. I guess what has me excited is the possibility of increased sharpness along with the huge ISO advantage of an MM in low light.
FWIW
Ed