I've been afraid of high ISO for way too long. Maybe it's because the D100 that was my first digital camera started to look like ass at anything about ISO 200. Maybe it's because the Canon Rebel XTi that I replaced it with shot circles around it but still looked like a bad russian night vision scope at iso 800 in low light, and like TV snow at 1600.

I had read horrible reports of banding and gritty, sharpness killing noise with the 50D. I have yet to see it. I think the problem lies in the division between LOW light, and NO light. I tend to flash and burn, drag the shutter, and try to keep my dynamic range fairly reasonable, and have really had no issues with high ISO noise.

I shot a (oh noes don;t tell anyone.... ) wedding last saturday, primarily in monochrom at a mansion outside Issaquah washinton. With the ambient light and usually no flash I was able to shoot ISO 1600 with fast lenses and keep a shutter speed above 1/60th - most of the time 1/125 or 1/250th and ended up with tighter grain that I would have gotten had I used tri-X. No banding or wierd patterns that all the detractors seem to see....

I really don't understand what all the bitching about noise is in the last couple generations of camera bodies. Nikon's JPEGs may look better due to better in camera noise reduction. I could care less if my camera could even shoot Jpegs, so not an issue.