Scott Speck wrote:
Hi Everyone,

If I'm interested in doing night photography (mostly of distant scenery)
with exposure times ranging up to 1 minute, I need to know whether a DSLR
like the Nikon D70 with NR turned on will yield a much cleaner image
(dark-noise-wise) than a good point/shoot digital with NR noise reduction)
turned on. Is the difference profound enough to differentiate a great photo
from a terrible one, or is it barely noticeable?

The difference is profound. The D70 is typical; there is no need for a
'tweaked' Canon or any other DSLR. They are very good; better than
film. If you start doing exposures of 20 minutes or so you will get
purple noise around the corners of the D70. This disappears with NR
turned off. The trouble with NR is that it takes as long as does the
original shot -- an exposure of 2 minutes means NR of two minutes. This
is because NR works by taking a shot of a black mask with an exposure
time equal to the photo and then it compares the two. For that reason a
lot of photographers, including myself, just turn the NR off and remove
the noise in Photoshop.

Some of the astrophotographers here have said that DSLRs work better
for that than film cameras, but I do not do astrophotography at the
moment.