Hi,
A much better answer than bragging. Look here, you cannot send prints on the web. Folks can download raw images from the net and do their own processing and printing, that is what I would recommend, but there are not that many comparable images on the net.
The figures here are essentially based on long research by and calculated by industrial quality tools. The Pentax shot I compare with was made under optimal conditions by professional testers.
In my experience, the differences are not readily observable, but I had only a few observers. Quite a few MFD users indicate that there is little difference between the new 36 MP cameras and low end MFD to which my P45+ belongs. Opinions differ.
Another reflection is that you start with an image, and do capture sharpening, after that there may be some creative sharpening. The image will than be resampled to printer resolution that may be 360PPI or 720PPI on Epsons and output sharpening applied. Different pipelines may give different results, but any image will go trough many conversions before it is converted to small dots on paper.
Jeff Schewe and the late Bruce Raser have written a small book on sharpening, Jeff writes that research by Bruce indicated that 180 was plenty of resolution for prints viewed by 20/20 vision at 50 cm or more. That resolution would correspond to 22 x 33 inch on a 24MP DSLR clearly larger than the 17" that was asked.
Page 30 in that book shows smallish prints from iPhone 4S, Fuji Fine Pix A820, Canon EOS Digital Revel XT, Canon EOS 1DsIII and a Phase One P65+. Jeff says that the images cannot be told apart. Of course, the P65+ image could be enlarged to 28"x37" and the iPhone 4s to 4"x5.3", but what Jeff says is that when the image is good enough there will be little visible difference.
A while ago, there was a conversation between Mikael Reichmann and the famous printer Ctein. Ctein used Pentax 67 in former days but now shoots 4/3, which he clearly says is good enough. Good enough for A2 size prints which is the largest he makes.
Best regards
Erik
about the visible difference... not the measurable difference. Do you think your post is really helpful to answer the initial question?