It isn't an exact straight line to Machholz but a good enough reference point as I described. It's about a thumb north of the line and very faint with 35 power binocs at my location.

The sky was fairly clear at 10pm but I had a hard time locating the comet with the light pollution. After several minutes of nothing I went to Andromeda Galaxy which is 4.5 mag to see if I could even view it and found it fast, a fuzzy dim glow. With Machholz at apparent mag of 5.10 I figured I should be able to view it with the binocs so I found a suitable support for my tiring arms for stable viewing and found it after several minutes. A very dim fuzzy cloud like ball and not near as bright as the Orion Nebula at 5 mag.
For the claims of naked eye viewing of Machholz you definitely need very dark skies and for capturing an image probably several seconds for light pollution locations.