You haven't read my posts. I understand that MFDB has an image quality advantage at base ISO. It's ideal for the studio where sharp eyelashes and creamy skin texture is the goal. Photographers who use DBs don't have to bother with 'expose to the right' rules. They've got oodles of dynamic range to spare.
Actually, Ray, I have read your posts. I was just responding to certain parts of them that people seem to find most annoying. I didn't say (or at least I didn't mean to say) that you don't see the benefits of MFDBs. Instead, I was trying to suggest that there are a whole host of reasons why people use MFDBs. Your suggestions that people are buying them as status symbols is way too simplistic and insulting, and really, what purpose do such comments serve. Your suggestion that MFDB owners are somehow living in fear of DSLR improvements is also way too simplistic and insulting. People on this forum are, by and large, smart people. They are perfectly capable of making their own assessments of the state of technology, and what works for them. They don't need someone who isn't familiar with their business needs telling them how to think, or needling them on their choices.
Nevertheless, I'd like to see some comparisons at various ISO's, just so I can get a handle on the magnitude of the difference.
Alas! This is to be denied because the consensus is, I should test this for myself even though I have no access to the equipment.
As for ISO comparisons, I won't even bother. I accept the fact that my P45+ isn't in the same league as my D3. I personally don't shoot the P45+ over ISO 200. I typically shoot at ISO 50 or 100. I knew that limitation going in. Some people here are showing pretty good DB results up to ISO 800, but for me at least, with the smaller photo sites of the P45+, and no microlenses, I'll stay at the lower ISOs, thank you. But I guess I have to ask "What's the point of debating this?" Who's going to willingly use a MFDB system in low light, high ISO venues when a modern DSLR would be much more appropriate. People who buy MFDBs aren't buying them for their high ISO prowess. So to my mind the comparison is pointless.
Regarding resolution or accuity, I have done my own side by side comparisons between the D3 and the P45+, with different focal length lenses so that I'm compariing the same resolutions (i.e. same pixel density on the same subject). The D3 pixels (and no doubt the 5D, and 1DIII, and 1DsII pixels) are excellent, and a lot of detail can be pulled from the shadows. But even in such comparisons, the P45+ pixels are better (the P25+ or P30+ pixels may be even better still). Not hugely better, but still better. Maybe it's the lack of AA filter. Or maybe it's due to some of the more intangible advantages that people often claim for MFDBs. I only know what I see. But this is a somewhat unfare comparison. It deliberately brings the P45+ down to the D3s level. If I'm standing at the same place with both systems, and shoot the same landscape composition, there's no doubt which one is better (I realize you understand this, but I'm making the point for completeness).
So, Ray, if you want to play the gadfly on this forum, more power to you. Being a gadfly can be an honorable and thought provoking activity. But it seems to me there is a right way to do that, and a wrong way. Repeatedly making comments that seem more geared to inflame than clarify seems to me to be the wrong way. Of course, that's just my opinion. By the way, even if you don't feel that you are making inflamatory comments, you have to agree that many on this forum feel you do. So isn't that reason enough to rethink your approach.