for high iso and low noise you can,t go past the new sony chips that are in the nikon and pentax, in comparisons the pentax makes the best use losing less detail at high iso the k-5 (16meg) k-r (12meg) and k-x(same 12 meg) are very good as is nikon d7000(16meg) i know of two people who have just done all the home work one for astro and one for competition club photography both ended up with the pentax's. another thing is the old cheap quality glass, my 29 year old 50mm f1.7 lens works with in body stabilisation (for terrestrial) and all other functions, about 100 bucks on ebay now, i use it for competition regularly. took this the other night 3200 iso cropped only no other processing
regards brad
