Does Noise Sound Really Bad?

(This is the Cultural Centre sitting astride a large piece of land fronting the famous Victoria Harbour in Hong Kong. Climb on the second deck of a podium in front of it at night and you'll have a great shooting opportunity for the backlit scene on the one hand and for the amazing harbour aglow with a motley of neonlights on the other. Now, can you guess if the shadows are of one person of two? )

(Cultural Centre, Hong Kong) Before I post the nightshots comparison of the GX200, G10, LX3 and other beasts, may I ask: How does noise sound to you? "The high ISO shots by GX200 are noisy," one commentary goes. "The high ISO performance of G10 is not as good as LX3 noise-wise," another review says. "The noisy nightshots of P6000 make it a headturner," the third one laments. Does noise sound really bad? A friend of mine looked at her wedding shots at the studio and sounded really puzzled, "Why are these film photos not as clean as the DSLR's?" The photographer explained with a twinge of emarrassment that it was only because the digital photos were too clean. [Note: Luminance noise makes an image look grainy on screen, but usually not visible on prints while chroma noise is visible as random red and blue pixels and is usually less obvious on both] Save for the presence of excessive chroma noise, noise could give a grainy (and richer, to me) taste to a photo. Maybe there is a reason in my thinking: I came from the film era. For those who start with digital gears since their first sorties into photography, noise may sound bad. So, how does noise sound to you:

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