Ray, both the D30 and the 1Ds images are 1:1 crops, nowhere near full-frame. The 1Ds image shows more of the nebula simply because it had a longer effective exposure. Unless I have cocked up somewhere the detail should look roughly similar is size (D30 pixels are 9.5 microns square, 1Ds 8.8 microns). Noise behaviour in these cameras is very different depending on exposure lengths. For astrophotography one needs both high ISO and loooong exposures. For landscapes we are talking about exposures that are well under a second long. For landscapes thermal noise should be almost a non-issue. Though if you shoot at 45 to 50 degree C (I do, it's hot here!) you do see a lot of noise even on landscapes. Tests at room temperature yield the same dark-frame noise histogram (20% along the x-axis at the back-of-camera histogram) at ISO 800 for the D30, D60, 10D, 1Ds with exposure lengths of 0.25 minutes, 2 minutes, 12 minutes and 27 minutes respectively. You can therefore see that in loooooong exposures the D30 is hopelessly noisy for shooting nebulae and galaxies. These require exposures up to hours long (somebody recently posted a shot with an exposure stack of 45 1Ds frames each 5 minutes long!). The D60 was the first, truly viable DSLR for such stuff, capable of giving superb results with the right equipment in the right hands. Canon has truly revolutionised long-exposure noise handling between the D30 and D60. What they do seems to be a closely-guarded secret. So far I have not managed to see even a semi-plausible explanation of how they do it. None of the usual camera-test forums publish data that are very pertinent to astrophotographically long exposures and I had to beg for data on these Canon DSLRs all over the world to get them. I finally compiled the above data from Florida, Hong Kong, Colorado and Oman (where I am located). No idea how the 14n would behave. Anyone who owns one, put on lenscap, set ISO to 800 and shoot exposures of 2 seconds, 4 sec, 8, 16, 32, 64,... doubling each time until the histogram toe gets to one-fifth up the x-axis. Tell us what the exposure length you got to. Perhaps it's an undiscovered gem for astrophotography? I suspect it to be more like a D30 (15 seconds)...