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.
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.
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)
