My main problem with Mark's review is something that he doesn't even discuss -- that's the implication that the qualities he discusses are relevant to the practice of photography, which they aren't. Other than that, I have no problem with his review at all, since the rest of it is simply opinion. But saying that the M240 is sharper than the D800e -- a controversial statement, to say the least -- is like saying my tires are very slightly prettier than yours.
Since there is hardly any other way to discuss the subject, look, for example, at the universe of "famous" photographs. None of them depend on resolution; in fact, quite a few of them depend on a deliberate lack of resolution. If anyone is aware of an exception to this rule, please let me know. And don't say "Ansel Adams" -- as much as he may have struggled to get the sharpest possible photos, with the best placement of the exposure and subsequent processing in a chosen zone...he was working with equipment greatly inferior to the equipment we have now...lenses, film, everything. He had to struggle and to place an emphasis on sharpness, or he otherwise wouldn't have gotten any kind of acceptable quality. "Moonrise" is not what we'd call a sharp photo, and I have an extremely good example of it hanging on my living room wall, and I look at it daily, and I know; I have birthday party photos that are sharper. If Adams had had access to our equipment, I think he would have stopped worrying about sharpness altogether, and would have been perfectly happy working hand-held with a D700. The critical aspect with Adams wasn't resolution, it was talent.
To me, the original post and the subsequent comments have been like reading a discussion of which mechanical watch is best -- the Rolex, the Philippe Patek, etc. -- while ignoring the fact that a Timex keeps better time than either one. In other words, it's an obsession with operation and technique, rather than final performance. The final performance in photography, the print, may be anything a photographer chooses, but whatever he chooses, the critical element in its quality will not be resolution.
As for the comments by wildlightphoto, I've looked at his pictures for years, and he is an extremely able photographer, maybe one of the best on this website, for the kind of photography he does. But his insistence on the DMR is (IMHO) a psychological quirk, not a really defensible technical position. The DMR wasn't all that great when it first came out, and it has long been superseded by better cameras. The fact that he can't make better photos with another camera, or that he doesn't believe that any other camera can match the DMR's color, is not much different than Mark's insistence on the greatest of the M240. You have to keep in mind that as good a photographer as wildlightphoto is, there is a very large number of well-known, accomplished wildlife photographers, who, one might venture to say, match his quality, and yet don't use the DMR, and in fact use a variety of Nikons, Canons, Sonys, etc. The most you can say for the DMR is that it works well for him. Well, the other thing you can say is, even in his photos, resolution isn't all that important. Who cares if you can see the pupil of an eye, if you can feel the birdness of the bird?
