Nikon Capture NX sharpening bug!
I’ve found a blatant bug which explains why some Nikon D3 images processed in Nikon Capture NX 1.3.0) go soft (Mac OS X 10.4.11, MacPro). Let your own eyes see the story; the only difference in processing is that the blurry one was processed with exposure compensation of +1/2 stop. Apparently, using exposure compensation in Capture NX disables any sharpening set in (set like this no sharpening will happen). Perhaps there are other such combinations that defeat sharpening.