And Erwin does not own an A900 (as far as I know) and he did not test it head-to-head with the M9, by say putting something like the ultra-fine Zeiss 135mm f/1.8 on the A900 and the 135mm f/3.4 M Leica lens on the M9 for a one-to-one comparison. He would probably have reached the same conclusion with the A900, that he did with the D3X - maybe even more so, since even the lofty D3X does not get to be coupled with as fine a lens as the Sony's Zeiss, to my knowledge. The lens obviously has an outsized influence here on the final result, and my personal finding is that the Zeiss primes in the Sony/Alpha system (the 135mm even more than the 85mm) have that extra wallop that even the excellent Zeiss zooms like the 24-70 f/2.8 and the 16-35 f/2.8 does not have.
Well, the Zeiss 100mm f2.0 I have been using a lot this past year is a totally brilliant performer (said by many to be one of the very best pieces of glass ever). I have not seen a comparison between the 100 and 135, but I would be surprised if they were very far appart.
Clearly, it seems like Michael and Erwin have differing views on what they find to be "better" and you find Erwin's view more convenient and believable. I personally am pretty neutral on this point.
What we have here are 2 different views on 2 differents things. The proposition that these views can be compared in absolute terms only stands on the assumption that the A900 and D3x have the same level of performance. That is the point I cannot agree with.
(A>B, C>D) only yields relevant information on the relative value of A and D if the relationship between B and C is known.
I couldn't care less if the M9 were better than the d3x, that doesn't affect me and I have no way to verify this myself. I am only glad to see more valuable photographic options on the market. But it should be clear that Michael's assessement that the M9 is better than the A900 doesn't establish any clear relative ranking between the M9 and the D3x, one way or the other.
Having worked with files from the D3x (an awful lot) and the A900 (a lot less but still enough to form an opinion), I see differences that are as significant as it gets between DSLRs of similar pixel count. Put it otherwise, if the A900 and D3x are the same for Michael, then he doesn't need bother looking at any new DSLR in next 2 or 3 years, they will be the same as well.
I could very well understand that compared to a P65+ that he will use for all his critical work anyway, both are poor resolutionwise. Now for those of us looking at extracting the best possible quality from DSLRs, much cleaner shadows and the ability to apply a lot more low radius sharpening are very relevant and important factors.
Final comment from me on this.
Cheers,
Bernard