graphs like this tell only part of the story, because they don't reveal what the image noise actually looks like. In the case of the 20D, its noise pattern is particularly fine and tight-grained, which makes it much less visually apparent and objectionable than that of many cameras. At the same time, the 20D's noise-suppression technology does an excellent job of holding noise in check, without losing subject detail in areas of subtle contrast. It's easy to have low image noise, if you don't mind giving up a lot of subtle subject detail, but the EOS-20D seems to avoid this tradeoff almost entirely. Most impressive is the extent to which Canon has managed to reduce image noise at ISO 1600 and 3200, relative to every other camera on the market, including even their own 1D Mark II.