I laughed too! That was a great tour on Mauna Kea and the sky was fabulous that day - so blue it was almost purple. Anyway, I made a quick sketch of M74 and it's new supernova 2013ej last month at the Oregon Star Party and only noted the magnification was 253x and SQM reading was 21.65:

M74 and SN2013ej_crop.jpg M74 and SN2013ej_cropInvert.jpg

M74 is a very dim spiral, as has been noted already, and although I didn't go looking for any of the HII complexes I think a very fine night would be needed to see them - it took some doing to see just the spiral arms when I made this sketch!