Get all sorts of different results myself depending on seeing/LP.

Have a 4" left in the car for the times I'm spontaneously traveling through dark sky, and I've hauled it out and seen what seems like a lumpy circular haze around two fuzz spots.

When I've had 10" along, I definitely see kinks and arms, but they're not pronounced.

Near my orange LP level house, I've had good nights where my 12" has clearly shown some of the brighter HII regions, which has caused my jaw to drop, as most of the time I'm lucky to see a faint circle of haze with two fuzzy lumps with it.

To this end, last thursday night I was waiting for my son to finish up a project outside, keeping him company. The sky cleared while I waited, so I set up the 12" briefly and fined up collimation, jumping up magnification slowly up to 900x. Then as he finished up, we both looked in and around M13 at 250x-900x, and the sky was stable and dark, he found IC 4617 (!) for the first time, and we had a long unexpected discussion about globs! Shortly after had to quit.

Often I can gauge the night by if I can't see much difference through the 4" or the 12" - usually pack it in very quickly then. The variability of the sky greatly exceeds the variability of my instruments.