The D5000 displays an excellent noise profile. You start to see a tiny bit of degradation at ISO 800 if you squint a little, but shots remains eminently usable up through ISO 1,600.
Caption byLori Grunin
/ Photo by Matthew Fitzgerald/CNET
While ISO 3,200 displays a little more color noise than I like to see in my photos, it's still in keeping with performance for this market segment. And the D5000's extended range of ISO 6,400 remains usable for a variety of scene types.
Caption byLori Grunin
/ Photo by Matthew Fitzgerald/CNET
You probably wouldn't want to print ISO 3,200 photos at full size, but scaled down there's no color shift, and for shots like this it works very well.
The D5000's metering works extremely well, even in bright, high-contrast light, and the image Expeed processing engine takes care to maximize the tonal range appropriately without clipping highlights or shadows. (ISO 200, f16, 1/125, matrix metering)